The Balloon Boy hubbub proves a rule that companies in crisis should keep in mind: News is entertainment at the speed of the Internet.
Here’s how it happens:
The incident goes live. In this case, Balloon Boy’s parents called the TV stations.
The incident becomes breaking news. A herd mentality takes over competing media outlets. Nobody wants to miss the shot that everybody else has. Time elapsed: About half an hour.
Breaking news becomes a national story. Local coverage feeds into national outlets, and everything feeds into the Internet. Live event coverage goes viral. News links and commentary fly around email, Facebook and Twitter. People at work see headlines on the little TVs in the elevators. Time elapsed: About an hour.
The story becomes a controversy. News reports contradict earlier reports, creating scandal. Questions, rumors and speculation become a constant din interspersed with breaking news updates of even the most minuscule facts. Talking heads on cable and radio blame liberals or conservatives for allowing things like this to happen. Internet coverage and chatter multiplies a thousand-fold. Time elapsed: Three to four hours.
The controversy becomes pop culture. The people who started it get interviewed on Larry King. Leno and Letterman make jokes that night. Saturday Night Live refers to it in a promo for this week’s show. Three times the number of media outlets show up the next day, and so do dozens of other people from all over. Some bring alcohol, others bring hand-made posters. Internet coverage and chatter multiplies several thousand-fold. Supermarket tabloids do cover stories. Time elapsed: One to two days.
Pop culture becomes the story. Media coverage and Internet chatter is the same as follows a popular reality TV show. People take sides with and against victims, villains and heroes. Everyone becomes a celebrity. Journalists – many of them ticked off for being played -- investigate school transcripts, arrest records and anonymous tips. Web sites pop up. Talk shows devote whole hours. Authorities launch formal investigations. Politicians express concern. Somebody announces a book.
Media critics blame the news media. News media blame consumers. Consumers find Balloon Boy Halloween costumes on the Internet.
Total time elapsed: About 72 hours, give or take.
(Photo: The New York Post reported that an online gaming company in San Francisco put “Balloon Boy Game” on the Internet in only about six hours after the news story went national.)
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Investors have pulled out
of InDenverTimes, the online news site started by former
reporters and staffers of the defunct Rocky Mountain News.
I would have yanked out my money also.
One, there are too many people hanging around hoping to get paychecks. Start-ups have skeleton staffs, not departments.
Second -- and most of all -- InDenverTimes is simply a bad product. Today's home page is dominated by a story about how the Rocky Mountain News would have been 150 years old today, and how InDenverTimes is made up of people who used to work for the Rocky Mountain News, and how it wants to pick up on the rich history of the Rocky Mountain News.
Most of the rest of the home page consists of appeals for subscribers, promising that they'll get better content and the chance to talk to editors and reporters.
There are many accomplished journalists at InDenverTimes.
But good intentions and a dead newspaper are not a business model.
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National media played up Oprah Winfrey's decision to pull a previously-taped show that was to commemorate the Columbine High School massacre ten years ago. Winfrey decided that the show "focused too much on the killers."
One of the people on the canceled show was Columbine High School principal Frank DeAngelis, who's had a constant presence in media coverage leading up to and during the ten-year anniversary.
Some critics argue that media is focusing far too much on Columbine's principal as well.
Westword media columnist Michael Roberts finds something "unsettling" about how eagerly DeAngelis seems to be engaging with the press, considering the criticism and lawsuits that alleged he had not done enough to prevent two teenage boys from murdering 12 students and a teacher. Roberts writes:
Perhaps he's simply trying to be responsive to press inquiries, of which he's no doubt swamped on a regular basis -- although saying "yes" to every request tends to reinforce the equating of Columbine and school shootings, as opposed to emphasizing that the school has moved on...
Or maybe he's interested in establishing himself as the person most responsible for bringing Columbine back from an unimaginable nightmare, as opposed to helping to fuel problems that may have contributed to the event.
Sure, DeAnglelis wants credit. He deserves it. But to suggest there's no more to it echos an unfortunately typical black-or-white, sincere-or-insincere interpretation of people who put themselves in the media limelight after such tragedies.
People are more complicated than that. And that includes people like DeAngelis, who looked a killer in the eyes and missed being killed himself by a few inches before kids slaughtered kids in his school.
"You start reading about yourself, and people are saying you have blood on your hands," DeAngelis told the Denver Post. " You receive threats on your life. And it gets to the point where you ask, 'Are they right? Am I a bad person?'
Being public through mass media seems one way that the face of Columbine is helping to answer to those questions.
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Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation's new blog gives an inside look at how the region's business community works to attract new employers and investments.
"Clark's Cone of Silence" is named for Metro Denver EDC honcho -- and decent electric guitar player -- Tom Clark, who is referring to the old Get Smart gag about a big transparent cone that was supposed to keep conversations confidential but didn't.
"We've also learned that this mechanism doesn't work," Tom said in an
announcement. "So we thought, let's give people outside of our 'Cone of Silence'
an inside look at not only what we do every day in economic development, but
more importantly, why we do it."
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