Reporters do their least self-conscious work when they’re startled by a story they hadn’t prepared to write. Think of the astonishing coverage of the 9/11 attack, natural disasters, and the 2000 election-that-would-not-end. But giving a reporter (or a pundit) too much time to think about a historic event such as VE Day, the moon landing, the fall of Communism, or the release of Nelson Mandela is like entering him into a grandiosity competition to see who can squeeze the most poetry out of his keyboard. Suddenly, everybody with a notepad and a word processor thinks he’s Norman Mailer.
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Jack Shafer writes below in his latest column for Slate.com.
Should the polls hold true, it will be very interesting to watch the coverage of an Obama victory. I for one will be overwhelmed with joy and will probably grab at every scrap of news coverage I can find.
It will be like when the Royals won 9 games out of the gate in 2003 and the next off-season, everybody had to treat them like legitimate post season contenders. I couldn’t get my eyeballs on enough positive coverage of my favorite team.
This will be just like that, only with coverage from every news organization known to man, and of an event with ramifications of slightly more important than the result of some baseball games (slightly more).
