Finding a different angle

If you turned on the television this past weekend, odds are you noticed that Hurricane Ike was being covered by every major news outlet.  This is understandable, of course, as the country was holding its breath and waiting to see if the citizens of Galveston who decided to ride out the storm would ultimately face the forewarned "certain death."  Every station had their anchors seeing who could get closer to the seawall without washing away as Ike crept toward Texas and it seemed as if each reported was positioned several yards down the shore from each other. (By the way, FOX's Geraldo Rivera wins the prize.)  As I flipped through the channels Friday evening, the stories didn't change and I soon grew tired of waiting for Ike to make landfall.

Later in the night one of my roommates, who had been drinking throughout the night, began complaining about one of the stations reporting about a town mayor that was displeased with evacuation efforts and got personally involved in the process.  My roommate didn't like how a "happy" story was being reported in a time of crisis and began criticizing media outlets for being ratings-driven.  Granted that he was drunk and not making enough sense to hold a civil argument about the matter, he still brought up two very good points.

Yes, the purpose of a media outlet is to make money.  While I think many people fail to realize this, it's the truth.  This being said, how can one news source work to get better ratings that its competition when everyone is covering the same story?  The answer is simple: find a different angle.

I thought it was great that this one station (sadly, I can't recall which one) took time to report something other than the impending hurricane and how much damage it had the potential to cause.  Every story has different angles and at a time when every station was dealing with numbers of people in the thousands who were evacuating or would be without power, it was nice to have a story focus on one individual and his efforts to make a difference in such a trying time.  It was a welcomed break from all the weather maps and rainfall charts, and I hope to see other news outlets try taking different angles in the future.