Pardon me for exercising some West Coast bias, but why the hell was a 15 second tremor the biggest news of the day in America last night and into this morning's newspaper and television talk shows?
Let's see – because it's the dog days of August, where domestically not much is happening, and oh yeah, it was centered in Washington D.C., our nation's capitol, where the largest concentration of journalists sit – and the quake's effects reverberated into New York City? Bingo, national disaster coverage is unleashed.
Except it wasn't a national disaster, or anything close to it.
This article appears in Aug 18-24, 2011.