LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: HOLIDAYS LEAVE NEWS IN LIMBO

There is an interesting phenomenon in the news business when holidays occur: News, it seems, stops.

American news outlets tend to scrounge for news during holidays like Thanksgiving. And I don't mean just the day of the holiday. Holidays anymore are stretched out to include weekends, so the Thanksgiving holiday doesn't end until sometime tonight.

Speaking of weekends, they are less newsy than weekdays in most cases.

And don't forget nights. In the pecking order of when news occurs, nights are near the bottom of the list.

And here is another phenomenon: There are fewer deaths (and, as a result, fewer obituaries) at holidays. However, there is a sharp increase in the day or two after the holiday. Those who study such waves in the human tide suggest there is an indomitable will to live past significant milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries and major holidays.

So why does news seem to grind to a near halt based on the turning pages of the calendar? You can be sure it isn't because things stop happening. As a matter of fact, lots of news is made when no one is looking. And that is the key to that particular phenomenon: Most potential news makers follow a set schedule, which takes them out of the loop, so to speak, and keeps them from doing things newspapers like to report. Likewise, news organizations create schedules that match, so there is a hand-in-glove pattern of newsmakers who like to be off on weekends -- and so do reporters and editors.

What about catastrophes and natural disasters? They happen on weekends and holidays, but unless they are major occurrences they aren't reported as aggressively as those calamities that fit the weekday schedule preferred by most workers.

It seems there ought to be major news happening around the clock every day all year long. If it is a holiday here, it isn't a holiday in the other half of the world. If it is night here, it is daytime in the other half of the world.

But the center of the universe for American news is Washington, D.C., and as the nation's capital goes, so goes the news. If there is a federal holiday, the news dries up.

Curious, isn't it? That is why when Americans go abroad and read newspapers in other countries, they continue to be amazed by the stories and information they never get back home. Why? Because newspapers in London and France and Cairo and Hong Kong don't regard Washington as the center of their news focus.

Meanwhile, Americans news organizations make the best of what they can get on holidays, weekends and nights. This explains, in part, why some stories get bigger play than they deserve. They just happened at the right time to be sucked up by the clock-watching news vacuum.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.