Drew Burden

If you live in Owensboro, I don’t need to tell you what happened at one second before 4:37 this morning. However, for the sake of those who do not, we had an earthquake. It measured 5.4 5.2 on the Richter scale, and it lasted about ten seconds. People from California are probably saying “psh, pussies” right now. The sad fact is, people around here make a big deal out of little things that no one else would care about. No one’s dead, every building that was standing before the earthquake is still standing now, let’s get on with our lives, m’kay?

I’d like to touch on a concept that Drew Curtis wrote about in his book It’s Not News, It’s FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off CRAP As News. It’s called media exhaustion and it describes the fact that the news media will beat a story into the ground and then start on it some more. He noted that the record before media exhaustion set in was about a week, and that was back when 9/11 happened. In our case today, I postulate that it took no longer than four minutes for the news media to wear itself out on this story. You could know all you need to know in less time than the ground shook this morning. The ground shook for 10 seconds and it measured 5.4 5.2. Done. If you were alive to hear me say that, you are FINE. Now go to work and be a cube droid all day. However, with today’s news you would probably get something like this:

ANCHOR: And now for a BREAKING NEWS STORY! We take you now live to Jack B. S. Rover in the field. What happened, Jack?
REPORTER: Thanks, Ed. I’m standing here in front of a church in Owensboro, Kentucky, where an EARTHQUAKE struck this morning! Church bells were ringing and the station received tons of calls from viewers reporting that the GROUND WAS SHAKING!
ANCHOR: How long did the ground shake, Jack?
REPORTER: Well, it depends, Ed. We heard reports of anything from a few seconds to some people saying they thought it would never stop. In fact, I have a shaken resident right now here to talk about it!
– Interview –
ANCHOR: Wow, what a story, Jack. Keep us posted.
REPORTER: Will do, Ed.
ANCHOR: And now, we have Dr. Cliff Iteshaft, geologist with the …

See what I mean? For any normal individual the exhaustion would set in much more quickly, because the individual is already well aware of what happened, even if the news media had not tirelessly assured this with their reporting.

Person: OMG did you feel it?
Me: No. Go away.
Person: Oh… okay.
– long pause –
Person: It was insane. The ground shook for like ten seconds and I thought a truck crashed into–
Me: I SAID I DIDN’T FEEL IT.

This conversation was over at me telling the other person to go away. Total time? Maybe two seconds. I do realize there are some people that will make an event that lasted no more than ten seconds a conversation piece for at least the next week. The local news will remind everyone that we live near the New Madrid Seismic Zone and that earthquakes do happen here (they’re a real Sherlock because I, for one, did NOT know we could have an earthquake here after one actually HAPPENED). Every school in the region will probably have an earthquake drill today. All this for ten seconds? Something isn’t right here.

And for the record before you ask, no, I did not feel it. I slept right through it. So shut up.

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Update 1: I just got the USGS ENS emails. They’ve downgraded the quake to 5.2 so I have fixed this post accoringly.