Back to blogging. Sorry I’ve resisted. Waiting for perfect opportunities, format, etc. – dumb. Let’s just do it!

We learn a lot from Facebook commenters. Based on an AP story, a KGW story and an online news release, I/we posted a story about the search for a missing Mt. Hood snowboarder — and learned quickly from those commenters that as it turns out, he had been found several hours earlier.

Why the lag and posting of “old news?” Because only a non-profit SAR assistance agency had tweeted out the good news around 1 a.m.

(An aside: No matter how many nifty tools like Hootsuite or Social News Desk one uses to amalgamate all the many Facebook/Twitter feeds, and using every tech trick in the book, we all still have just two eyeballs, one brain and a finite number of hours in a day to track things. )

I’m told the sheriff’s office involved actually surprised our Portland media partners with a news release in the first place – because quite often, they don’t do so unless there’s a fatality. They, like we, work around the inevitable differences of opinion, policy and practice from one fire or police agency to the next, one spokesman/sergeant on duty to the next, etc. etc.

So when it comes to crimes, fires, crashes or noteworthy incidents, one of the many lesser-known reasons one event gets coverage and another of seemingly equal value doesn’t has nothing to do with the media’s editorial judgments, but of the judgments of others, for a variety of reasons.

For example, some fire departments include loss estimates, others don’t – and beyond the foibles of individuals and their different decisions on what to include or not, it’s also sometimes agency policies that differ from one to another. And even if we ask, well, again, the policies can dictate “unequal” treatment of roughly equal events, in terms of news judgment.

Then there’s the variables such as fire agencies’ inability to report on patient conditions, due to federal patient privacy laws. Police are under fewer restrictions, but still some.

Media policies also differ, and judgment calls abound – why, for example, name crime victims if they are in the hospital but not if they are not? Why (or why not) name others involved in crashes if they are not charged? I often have such debates with our relatively new news director and others. We can also put more info in online than on-air.

Then there’s another variable, probably quite familiar to many but not necessarily something you think about when reading or watching the news. The amount of other news going on that day, of equal or greater importance.

It probably happens in your job, too: Some items get more (or any!) care and attention some days than others, depending on the backlog of work to do and the prioritizing one must constantly rethink, in triage fashion. So it is with the news. It’s not an intentional slight on anyone’s cause, tale of woe, etc. It just … is.

So the next time you wonder, for example, why serious-injury Accident A got a write-up and seemingly similar Accident B didn’t, please keep in mind, it’s not necessarily an editor or reporter’s whim or biases, what area of town/region they like/hate, etc. etc. There are lots of other factors at play – some more or less obvious than others.

I sift through 100s of news releases in a day, and set aside a few worthy but not-critical ones I hope to post later on our Website. And the bar rises or lowers based on how much other, “real news” is going on. (And how well they cut/paste cleanly, another factor;-)

But I hate to go to bed with any interesting (to me), worthy-enough releases sitting in my inbox, marked unread until I get back to them. I also keep my home email inbox clean, and … I know many don’t care to leave things unread for hours, days, weeks, etc.

It’s why I put up with horrible battery life on my smartphone, because I keep the email-check settings set to … well, basically, now. As a competitive guy, a major news release or tip a minute or two earlier can make a big difference in who is first to tell you important things. And I always want that to be us.