Monday, July 16, 2007

Solid news judgment

From IMDB.com:

CBS News To Withhold News About Which Potter Characters Die
CBS News has decided that, despite the subject's apparent newsworthiness, who lives and who dies in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be revealed on the CBS evening newscast when the book hits the shelves of bookstores on Saturday. Patricia Shevlin, executive producer of the CBS Evening News Weekend Edition told the CBS blog Public Eye that the program plans to "show the lines, people buying [the book], Pottermania. But we're not going to tell the end." Undoubtedly, however, millions of kids will be grabbing the book (over the weekend, Amazon estimated preorders at two million) and immediately skipping to the final chapters to learn about the fate of their favorite characters, then posting their reactions online -- thereby scooping CBS News in the process.


There are two reactions to this: (1) it's ridiculous that who lives and dies in a book should be newsworthy, ever; (2) CBS is making the right move -- it would be absolutely stupid to reveal the ending of the book that likely will be the biggest publishing event in all of our lifetimes.

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