Annoying Blogger Habits, Part 73
Now that I have stepped back from my former 6 or 7 posts a day, and am basically blogging once a day, I look back at some of the craziness and am frankly a bit embarrassed. One very annoying thing bloggers do, and I did it myself on numerous occasions, is to breathlessly trumpet some bit of news as ‘breaking’ – as if the blogger were doing anything more than piggybacking on a link, usually to a dreaded MSM piece , or flogging some extremely minor story that puts their ideological opponents in a bad light.
Case in point today from two big dogs on the left:
From AMERICAblog, we get: BREAKING…Home Depot dumps O’Reilly, and from ThinkProgress, Breaking: White House Releases Letter on NSA Program.
These two examples are particularly misguided uses of the ‘breaking’ gambit, in my view, in that they essentially describe activities that have already taken place, and that are ‘open and shut’ events. A ‘breaking’ story, in this humble blogger’s opinion, involves events that are unfolding as we speak (or write). The textbook case was that horrible September day when CNN broke into its normal coverage with live shots of a burning World Trade Center.
Now, that is an extreme situation, but you can easily think of many others (the O.J. Simpson car chase, the JFK assassination, a hostage crisis, reports of a plane crash, or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court being rushed to the hospital after a seizure).
If the definition of ‘breaking’ is so elastic that it encompasses the release of a document by the White House, then it is too elastic to have any meaning at all.
My two cents: save ‘breaking’ for unfolding stories, of broad general interest or importance, and preferably involving original reporting or at least an original angle to a story.
What say you?…
Well said. I browser the RSS feeds of my blogroll and see the same “breaking” headlines over and over. Boring. I too have cut back on the self-made tether to my blog and I’m enjoying it much more again.
BREAKING: Decision ’08 abandons use of BREAKING.
Home Depot broke with O’Reilly because of his take on the kidnapped 16 year old who did not call the police when the rapist kidnapped the second kid last year, so not breaking and hardly news however the leftist can get all excited if they want. I also know from an email I rec’d that for every business that moveon.org attempts to protest the American Family Association is going to list for it’s members to shop and frequent, so Mr. Soros lets get it on with the battle of the who has the most money to make these companies decide to stay or go.