What's news?

There's an election coming up.

Two, in fact.

And the economy's volatile.

Hurricanes are all over the place.

The Toronto Blue Jays are trying to pull off their most improbably playoff appearance since 1989.

In other words, there's a lot going on.

For the news media, this is a good thing - they don't have to create news on their own, others are doing it for them.

But something's about to become very applicable, and it's something that might have never occurred to you - there's always the same amount of news.

Think about it. Newspapers are roughly the same size from day to day, newscasts are always 30 or 60 minutes long. It takes a huge event to change this - the last two times the KW Record produced a special edition, for example, were 9/11 and Pearl Harbour.

So we've created what's known as the news cycle, the idea that no matter what, there always has to be *something* going on.

The scary part? People know how to take advantage of this.

If you want people to hear about your news, if you want the publicity that comes from media coverage, you wait until a slow spot in the news cycle to release it. Case in point, Marvel Comics' decision to kill off Captain American a couple of years ago. It doesn't seem like something that would even make most newscasts, let alone be considered a big story...but Marvel dropped this bombshell when the news cycle was at its slowest, and I remember the local CTV station not only running a story on it, but running it before the first commercial break.

There's a flipside to this, of course. If someone *doesn't* want people to notice their news for whatever reason, they're well served to release it when the news cycle is at its busiest - as it will be from now through the American election. Something that might ordinarily be front page news will be bumped to the back, while something that would ordinarily be buried deep within the paper won't make it in at all.

So my plea to you: for the next two months, pay attention to the news. And not just the big stuff (although it is important), also the little things that people are hoping to have slip through undetected.

--Ryan