News and NEWS
Submitted by fyl on Wed, 2009/02/11 - 08:19.
The recent post about violence at UNAN reminded me, once again, about what is news here and news in the first world. Or, looking at it another way, news in a big country vs. news in a small country.
The most useful comparison on this site with its membership is between the big country U.S.A. and the small country Nicaragua. Or, between the first world country U.S.A. and the third world country Nicaragua. That's because 1) this site is about Nicaragua and 2) there are more members from the U.S.A. than any other country. Otherwise, I think there is no important distinction. That it, you could compare Costa Rica and the U.K. and likely come to the same conclusions.
In the U.S., NEWS is the next economic bailout, the next (or current) wars, the Superbowl, a movie star getting a face lift, and a 50-story building burning down. Things that either make great TV footage (Superbowl and fires) or have a measurable economic impact on many. Yeah, there is more but those are the headline items.
In Nicaragua, News is a baseball game with a traffic accident where someone is killed, few thousand attending, the price of gasoline, a 2-story house burning down or repair of a bad section of road. There just are no wars, Superbowl's of 50-story buildings here.
Where is there overlap? Weather (generally in the form of a huge bad storm), a huge transportation strike, rising food costs and maybe a few other areas. Or, another way to look at this is to see who advertises alongside the news. In Nicaragua it is likely to be a number to call for your astrological forecast, an appliance store or, on radio, even an employment ad.
In any case, headline news in Nicaragua is likely to be about something that actually happened in Nicaragua that involves some ordinary people. It's the kind of news that used to exist on small-town radio stations before everything became nationwide corporate "news services".
