Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

breaking news

A while back, I signed up for CNN’s breaking news text alerts for my T-Mobile cellphone. I signed up for the text alerts to stay up-to-date with anything major that might happen when I’m not near a computer or television. (For example, I was out of town the weekend the Columbia disaster happened; I found out about it via a CNN text message sent to my old Sprint phone.)

Things were fairly quiet for the first couple months, and then I started getting text alerts for seemingly anything and everything.

Take this weekend, for example. On Saturday, I got a text message about Steve Fossett breaking a major flying record. And on Sunday, I emerged from the Metro to find this message on my cellphone:

owner-textbreakingnews@CNNIMAIL12.CNN.COM/CNN Breaking News /— Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a hunting trip in Texas

Both are marginally interesting, but I don’t see how either warrants a “start clanging the bells” breaking news alert to my cellphone — particularly when, according to my service plan, I pay for every text message I receive, regardless of how inane or useless it might be.

In that vein, I propose a tiered system for breaking news alerts. If CNN wants to alert folks to anything and everything — and folks want to receive alerts about anything and everything — that’s great. But let those of us who only want to know about the big stories subscribe to a list with more stringent news judgement.

Perhaps a color-coded system?

• Red - The world is coming to an end. That is all.
• Orange - Major world events I need to know about as soon as possible, such as terrorist attacks, important deaths and contentious election results. (This does not include the result of votes whose outcome was already a foregone conclusion, like the Alito Supreme Court confirmation vote. Chances are, I’ve been following the story already; I just need to know how it ends if the result is different from what was already expected.)
• Yellow - The same as Orange-level news, but might include events that are important but whose result was already a foregone conclusion. A presidential inauguration, Alito’s confirmation and the Super Bowl results might fit in here.
• Green - The scope expands to include, perhaps, major sports scores and notable congressional votes. (Maybe other stuff, too, but my brain is mush at the moment.)
• Blue - Anything goes, from Los Angeles police car chases to Lindsay Lohan/Hilary Duff catfights. Perhaps we’ll assume that the Blue user isn’t near a computer or television very often but absolutely must know about the latest headlines on any topic.