We Want Media

Today marks day four of the ongoing Lisa Marie Nowak coverage. If you haven’t heard this name before or are a little fuzzy on who this woman actually is, then you need to tell me what rock you’ve been living under. Nowak is after all the “crazed,” “psychotic,” and “dangerous” NASA astronaut. Her experience is one that has all the makings of a lead story: passion, danger, a fall from grace, and of course a diaper. Move over Neil Armstrong, someone else is vying for your position as most famous astronaut, or perhaps most infamous astronaut.

On Tuesday Nowak was in a Florida courtroom being charged with attempted murder. Apparently, Nowak had driven over 900 miles from Texas to Florida to confront a possible rival for the affection of another astronaut. Other than the complete oddity of this story, what makes it all the more interesting is the media attention that has been generated towards this story. Almost every news cable channel was dedicating hours to covering this abnormal story. While nobody can deny that this story deserves attention, especially because of the position Nowak holds in NASA, to have hour or day long coverage of this one story seems quite ridiculous. In addition, the coverage just seemed to skim the surface of the real picture. Nowak had done something crazy, but what is the bigger picture? What are the possible connections to NASA? A New York Times editorial piece took the high road and addressed some of these questions. ABC World News also chose to take a different look at this story by focusing on NASA.

Maybe the rest of the media should take a lesson from these styles of coverage and perhaps not dedicate hours to future stories of this nature. Anyway, at least coverage of Nowak has died down. After all, there are more "newsworthy" stories out there. Anna Nicole Smith, may your soul rest in peace.