In the ninth grade, when the O.J. Simpson trial was finishing up, my biology teacher stopped class to let us listen to the verdict being announced on the radio - as if it were some landmark case that was going to pertain to our lives. Looking back, I see how ridiculous that interruption was.
Just to our northeast, in a wealthy, mountainous pocket of the United States, a young man waits for his future to be determined. He's 25, and he's on trial for rape. Wait a minute: In every city in every state in this country, 25-year-old men stand trial for a hundred different things, some of them guilty, some innocent - and few people care.
As Kobe Bryant defends himself in Eagle, Colo., where his preliminary hearing took place Thursday, the nation receives trial updates and more. There are articles about articles in which his accuser's name was printed mistakenly. There are articles about what kind of food the local bakeries and coffee shops are providing the media overwhelming the town.
Hailing from an uneventful Colorado town myself, where the JonBenet frenzy dominated local news for more than a year, the Kobe case makes me cringe. I bet the locals can't throw a snowball without hitting a picture of Kobe or a reporter covering Kobe's case or, for that matter, a reporter covering what the reporters covering Kobe's case are eating.
One Colorado newspaper, The Aspen Daily News, has decided to bow gracefully out of the storm. This paper printed an editorial last Thursday titled, "Kobe Who?" and declared it would no longer cover the case, except to announce a settlement or verdict.
"We don't want to be a part of pack journalism," Troy Hooper, an associate editor of The Aspen Daily, told The Associated Press.
But everyone's doing it! How can a paper compete with the other papers that all print the same news-free gossip?
Easy. In its editorial, The Aspen Daily News said its reporters were ignoring other important stories to cover Kobe's case. The Aspen Daily is betting that its readers have more pressing, relevant concerns. Many readers took the decision as a compliment and feel it's far better than most papers would do.
However, the owner of The Aspen Daily, Dave Danforth, disagrees with the editorial decision and said so Sunday. "I fully understand what they are saying, but we are no more going to change pack journalism than we are going to cure obesity," Danforth told the AP.
We wonder why America knows more about celebrity brand choices than politics. It's largely because we clog our media with photos and news of all things celebrity. We buy into the notion that celebrities' lives are happier, more exciting and more valuable than our own - and that their tiniest movements are worth recording.
It can be easy to forget that in a democracy, people are to be treated equally. We know that often they aren't in day-to-day life, but we don't have to buy into the fallacy that our lives are inferior to famous people's lives.
Small towns should be able to read about their own affairs, their own dramas. These things are interesting enough - relevant enough - not to be overshadowed by the big names of the world, even when the big names happen to be in town.
The Aspen Daily's small decision sets a good example. Hopefully other media organizations will get the hint and stop pretending everything a celebrity says or does is news. They may lose some Kobe-crazed readers but will establish something harder to come by: old-fashioned integrity.
Emily Lyons is a journalism senior. Reach her at emily.lyons@asu.edu.
