Two hundred stories, twelve slots

Picture a newsroom on an ordinary morning. It has about two hundred stories it could tell. The evening news has twelve slots. A slot is one place in the evening news, a few minutes long. So one hundred and eighty-eight stories will not be told tonight.

Here is a story's morning. Something happens. A reporter notices it. The newsroom weighs it against every other story that day. It wins a slot, or it does not. On a quiet day it wins easily. On a busy day the same story loses.

Put a story's morning in order, from happening to being seen.

Tap them in the order they happen, first to last. Each tap gets a number.

• An event happens
• The audience meets it, or never knows it existed
• The newsroom weighs it against the day's other stories
• It wins a slot, or it does not
• A reporter notices it

Most stories are gone before the newsroom weighs anything. Nobody was there, so nobody noticed. Nothing changed today, so it had no day. It happened far away, to people the audience cannot picture. It had no pictures. Each of those is a test, and a story that fails one is gone. The newsroom chooses last, from what is left.

Tap the test that removes the MOST stories.

Tap the part of the picture that answers it.

The twelve that win are not the twelve most important. The evening news picks the best mix: new today, near or familiar, with pictures, and easy to tell in a minute. Being important is one ingredient, and it is the weakest one.

Forty-eight stories are worth telling. Move the control to give the evening news more slots.

Move the control.

The number of stories changes from day to day. A quiet Sunday might bring sixty. An election day might bring eight hundred. The slots stay the same. So the same story can be the third item on one day and vanish on another.

The numbers are made up. Set how many stories the day has, and how many slots the evening news has.

Move both controls.

In September 2001, planes were flown into buildings in New York and Washington. A report on a famine was scheduled for that same week. What most likely happened to it?

• It ran bigger, because the audience was watching.
• It ran, because it was already made.
• It vanished, and not because it stopped being true.