2 Dacron women feared missing

It's Scary Foreign Disease Day at the local fishwrap: Coronavirus stories on the first three pages! Shall we see how we did?

OK, the front page is going to be all Dacron Republican-Democrat. How about that feature hole on 2A?

Well, that has some elements of risk communication. That sweet news spot at the top of 3A?

Maybe there's some news in the back somewhere ... wait, there it is!

True, no one picks up the morning paper (which I read as a pdf anyway; it's almost always available in the morning) for the latest developments. Could we have at least a little effort, though, at getting the depth and substance a little farther forward?
mm

Wrong cliche

The nice thing about daylight? Whatever your problems are, "in the dark" is a lot less likely to be one of them. Here, our friends at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network went from the sensible "Deadly storms leave millions without power during heat wave" (around 9 a.m.) to "Millions in dark" (around 11 a.m.).

This is a fairly serious event. Heat waves are a different sort of slow-onset disaster; their toll on life and health can be ambiguous, obscure and non-timely, making it harder for them to find a place on the news radar. If you have to resort to stock phrases in covering them, try to pick a stock phrase that doesn't contradict your dominant image.

Today's tip for all you junior-league players out there: Put the exact death count in as few places as possible. That reduces the risk of reporting "5 dead" in your homepage blurb and "7 dead*" in the hed you reach by clicking through.

* As of this writing; it could change as the story is written through.

Probably not

Large backlog of stuff to comment on (Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., we have not forgotten you!), so let's spend just a brief moment on Stuff You Shouldn't Do In Writing About Disasters. Today's point is: Don't write heds based on what you think ought to be happening.

Yes, there's shock. No kidding. But even though they're largely made up of foreigners, whole countries rarely sit around in one emotional state at a time. A more reasonable impression seems to be that, despite the genuinely epic scale of this disaster, Japan got off its duff pretty damn quickly. Agencies seem to have done what they practice for. People looked out for each other and themselves; they aren't just helpless toys of fate.

Shock, pervasive panic and general Hobbesianism are among the pervasive myths of disasters (here's a good place to start your lit review). We tend to write about them whether they're happening or not. No looting in sight? Well, write about how the National Guard is keeping the looters off the streets!
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Snakes on a plane Wal-Mart!

Today's discussion on risk perception and journalism comes to you courtesy of -- who else? -- Fox News.

What does the rest of your day look like if you're a resident of Fox World? Pretty bleak, as you'll note from the "Latest News"summary above(captured around 2 p.m. EDT). If you're home, you need to get out of the house right now. Indeed, if you're having lunch somewhere en route to the airport, the safest thing you can do is freeze in place, choke on your burger and hope a football player comes along in time to rescue you. Don't continue on to the airport; you'll either be mugged by your fellow passengers or killed in a gruesome collision. And whatever you do, don't go home. If your spouse doesn't kill you (two wives dead, one wounded, one missing), your uncles or your kids will (especially if they've been playing Beer Pong on their video consoles). Or you'll just die from drinking too much cold water.

Now let's consider the fourth-most-read story of the last 24 hours over at the McClatchy Washburo, "Wal-Mart customer bitten by rattlesnake hiding in plants." Note, in particular, the conclusion:

Wal-Mart said it contacted emergency services immediately after the shopper was bitten and is working with authorities in the investigation, said Daphne Moore, a spokeswoman with the company.

''This is clearly an isolated situation. Customer safety is always a priority,'' Moore said.

Well, clearly! I mean, we can't have people stampeding out of Wal-Marts across this great land of ours in fear of rattlesnakes under every potted plant in the entire building isolated cases of almost entirely harmless episodic accidents, can we?

Let's set the economic-determinist argument to rest for a moment. The quote isn't there because Wal-Mart is an advertiser (from a newspaper perspective, it generally isn't, with a few amusing exceptions). It's there because everybody goes shopping, and the Episodic Reptile Disaster narrative calls for an indication at this point that (a) you can relax and (b) the newspaper and Wal-Mart have things under control.* Even if, as the "full story" at the Miami Herald notes, there have been half a dozen or so such snake bites at nurseries in the area over the past decade.

Lots of time to spend on a pretty trivial story, right? Sure, even if it's still hanging in there at #4 on a national Web site. But think outside the paradigm** for a second. What if every story about the "war on terror" -- or more to the point, every story about defense appropriations or congressional campaigns -- included a paragraph putting your personal risk of terrorist mayhem in any particular decade into perspective? How does it compare with your chances of getting bitten by a rattlesnake at the Wal-Mart? (John Mueller's already gone into the comparative risk of drowning in your own toilet, so I won't go there.***)

As long as we're casting about for ways to save journalism from itself or the Internet or whatever, maybe we could give that one a try.

* For a slightly different perspective, see today's entertaining "Confirmed by Science" over to the Language Log.
** Or whatever Those Crazy Kids in newsroom management are saying these days.
*** Even though we have a cat who thinks it's cool to drink out of one.****
**** Woodchuck.