What constitutes breaking news?

I skipped posting here this Monday, since I had a minor speaking part at an early morning breakfast for local elected politicians and candidates, an opportunity to meet with them as a group, present information about the college (and the budget challenges) and have a round (square, really) table discussion with them about ideas and solutions.

So now it's Tuesday morning, dark, clear, and cool.  Two signs from this just-past weekend that show our steady progress deeper into fall: a heavy coat of frost on roof tops Sunday morning and the presence of wood smoke from neighbors starting to augment their home heat with the fireplace. So we do march further into fall-ness, but we are still close enough to the memory of summer to enjoy sunny weekends and weekdays (like we have been enjoying) as if they were warmer than they are. The trees are still fully leaved, and resplendent in bright fiery colors, so the bleaker aspect of late fall and winter is still to come. [OK, now why does the "e" in fire suddenly leap to the left side of the "r" when fire becomes fiery?]

This is the second morning the NY Times has woken me up at shortly after 4:00 AM with "breaking news" that was neither wanted nor of sufficient import to be worth waking early. Bank of America was part of the headline that beeped and lit up my nightstand, but I really didn't care as I fumbled for the off button.  There are two things wrong with this situation.  The first is that I have quite intentionally turned off the breaking news alert feature, but this iPad app clearly isn't listening.  The second is that the NY Times has decided that acceptable hours for breaking news are based on their local time zone, yet their app is installed on iPads all around the globe.  No option is provided to allow alerts only between certain user-defined local hours.  So, while I applaud the NY Times for finally making their entire content available via this app, I'm about to take it off my iPad so I can get a full night's sleep.

There is a third issue, I suppose, with the NY Times breaking news feature, but it is not specific to just this one app. With the passing of the passive printed newspaper and its casual serendipitous path to discovery through reading and page turning comes the more interactive path of electronic news. The interactive piece can be directive as well as user-based. So the NY Times decides what constitutes breaking news and is worthy of pushing in front of its readers with a digital noise and an on-screen pop up (much like getting a text message on a smart phone).  This is the digital equivalent of saying, "Drop whatever you are doing and look here, because this is momentous life-changing information you must see right now!"  Planes flying into buildings, declaration of war, a major geological catastrophe, those are things I can see pinging your readership with in the moment. Anything less and there should be some sort of list of categories from which readers can select the other news items they want to be interrupted for.  I don't like my news sources getting aggressive about pushing news at me.

On a lighter note, this morning's delicious mix of tunes concluded with Van Morrison's Carry on regardless. The song ends (and it did end just as I pulled in my parking place and set the parking break) with Van Morrison giving an odd spontaneous (or so it feels) yodel and then chuckling at himself in the background for several seconds as the instruments wrap the tune up. A reminder, perhaps, that we shouldn't take ourselves (or our news) too seriously?

• Matthias Lupri Group: Saucey
• Electric Owls: Magic Show
• Sleepy Sun: The Chain (Live)
• Van Morrison: Carry on regardless