The sudden death of designer Kate Spade was basically non existent amongst most of the media except for the breaking news nature when the story started to peculate around 12:00 ET yesterday when a call to the NYPD by her housekeeper found her dead with a note nearby. Early and late reports are classifying this as an “apparent” suicide.
There has not been much follow up on the national media (I didn’t check the “breakfast TV” shows), the Fox News Chanel, CNN, CNBC, did not have this as a lead. The local New York TV stations had this on their lead, but not even their all newsradio station had no blurb online.
Online it was worse, it took me from heading home from Nashua, half way through the ride before I found a story on foxnews.com vis-a-vis an article that combined other sudden deaths.
The stories of yesterday, the alleged sudden cancelation of the Philadelphia Eagles’ trip to the White House, and Presidant Trump replacing the ceremony to honor our country; lingering legal scandals in the White House, CNN on fire for releasing a story that had to be retracted (via Fox News); CNBC having other stories focusing on President Trump’s political dramas, etc.
It seems like the “consultants” feel they know more than what we want. We are such a polarized nation, between red vs. blue, bull vs. bear, optimist, vs. pessimists. The news has to be shocking, provocative, and getting the pants wet no matter what side you see anything on.
As a guy looking in, it doesn’t take that much to realize how much Kate Spade meant to a generation of young women of a certain age a generation ago. She was a cultural icon. The saddest part is the entertainment channels and programs did more tribute-like analysis when the rest of the mainstream media went dormant.
There were ways to keep the viewers updated, 60 second update at the bottom of the hour, CNBC using WNBC or NBC News reporters for a quick blurb, since there’s a business angle, and I could go on.
I have lost a lot of faith on national media. There used to be times when the news was so slow, they would failover to the wire dishes and follow police chases, if there wasn’t enough news to fill up. Those were the good days, before everything had to be partisan reporting.
Anyways R.I.P. Kate Spade
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