The death and rebirth of news

When you read this, you will hopefully know who the next president of the United States will be, because that will mean everything went smoothly and there was no shadiness in 2008 as there was in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Of course, that poses a big problem for people like me who are getting paid (mostly) to talk about it.

You see, as I’m writing this column, it’s Monday morning, but I know nobody will see this until press time Wednesday. I can’t talk about what’s going to happen, because you already know. I can’t talk about what happened, because I don’t know.

And I sure as hell can’t talk about anything other than the election.

For the past 10 months, the national conversation has been dominated mostly by yesterday’s (or tomorrow’s) election. From the Iowa primary to judgment day, that’s been about all that the news media and professional talkers have been interested in. It’s to the point where many – myself included – have just wanted to get the damn thing over with, so that we don’t have to hear about it anymore.

But now that it’s all over, there’s a news vacuum. Sure, there will be about a week of post-game coverage, but after that, the mainstream media will have to find something else to fill the infinite void of airtime that was created with the advent of cable news. And this is an absolutely horrifying proposition, even worse than the Chinese water torture of the constant election coverage.

This is because the mainstream media are terrible at life, and instead of filling up that airtime with coverage of legitimate issues, like how we’re ever going to be able to fix the financial crisis, the climate crisis, the various human crises going on in places like Darfur, Burma and Tibet; they will bombard us with useless crap. Once again we will be roped into helping Nancy Grace locate the most famous missing child of the day, while ignoring the ones who aren’t as cute. Once again we will be constantly updated on what that crazy Britney Spears has done to her hair lately.

The biggest blessing of an election cycle is when candidates are debating issues, those issues become news, and we hear about them. We learn about what’s going on with our financial system because we have to, because the candidates have at least slightly different takes on it and want us to know what they are. The important news of the day and the most widely covered news of the day are, however briefly, the same thing. It becomes financially viable for news networks to cover actual news because it’s what people are most interested in.

With the exponentially expanded level of involvement on both sides this year, it’s possible that the population is now more politically inclined, and maybe real news will permanently become the news that sells. I really hope so, because it would be a huge step toward fixing the problems the United States needs to fix.