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Blogging for the first time with the new cable modem connection, although for the time being, I'm probably going to keep the Mindspring accounts active, however.

The relevance of death
Mark has already pointed out the interesting juxtaposition of the deaths of Johnny Cash and John Ritter. However, the news coverage on CNN this morning was a bit intriguing.

While The Man in Black is the top story right now on CNN.com, he was somewhat shunted coverage on American Morning in favor of Ritter. It was especially more evident on the ticker, where there was plenty of stuff about Ritter, even though Cash got top billing, so to speak.

Surprisingly, I can see how and why the coverage slanted the way it did. The amount of stuff on Cash written, produced, etc. over the years seems to be much easier to digest in the online medium where you can get both immediacy and depth/background. Cash's failing health also seemed to make it easier to have something ready just in case; however, it is interesting to note that he was just released from the hospital on Tuesday for an ailment that caused him to miss the MTV Video Music Awards.

In Ritter's case, the suddenness of his passing, not to mention that it happened overnight and didn't make most morning papers on the East Coast, seemed to play into the hands of the morning news show, or at least the way CNN runs theirs. They trotted out a lot of entertaiment reporters who could either think fondly of him or wonder what the future holds for his TV show that he was in the middle of shooting at the time of his death. Since he was still in mid-career and was at least a moderate star, his death got a lot of coverage and almost on par with Cash. Otherwise, it may not have been a

Cash was a music legend and icon, and was even relevant to today's youth thanks to his recent video. In some ways, I think CNN may have been a bit light on covering his death, especially you'd think they'd have as much stuff in the can as the online folks did. But, the morning show is a lot about the hosts, so the more people they can find to talk about this stuff live, the better for the show. It's probably not as easy trying to find other country legends for a TV interview that quickly. So out goes the prerecorded stuff, and in comes a roundtable discussion of entertainment news editors/reporters who happened to be on their way to work.

One bit I did catch at the end, though, that was a unique, if strange, angle to both deaths was bringing out Dr. Sanjay Gupta to explain the ailments that led to both men's deaths. It made for a solid explainer for some medical issues few would've been able to understand (especially in Ritter's case).