We're kickin' it old school

One of my favorite things about Turner Classic Movies is the "One Reel Wonders" they use as filler between features. Sure, you've seen Vertigo a thousand times, but TCM is the only place you'll catch a gem like Important News.

Featuring a young Jimmy Stewart in a supporting role, the fifteen-minute short short is the story of "Scoop," an old newspaperman in a small town. It's big news for Scoop when he spots the editor of a Chicago newspaper vacationing in town; bigger news when a nationally notorious gangster is killed in the streets by the Feds.

But the paper is about to go to bed, and Scoop can't let the local farmers down by burying the story about the impending freeze. And he can't bump the ad on the front page because the local department store owner has gone all-out for his biggest sale ever.

So, Scoop puts the story where it belongs -- in the obituaries. I paraphrase:

Gunman killed
Notorious gangster Howard "Pretty Face" Wilson was killed by federal agents in a gunfight on mainstreet last night. He was not known to have relations in town.

The locals initially make fun of Scoop for burying the lede, but then the big-city editor runs a laudatory piece on him in the Chicago daily and tries to hire him away. But Scoop knows his town inside and out and has a story about the birth of a set of twins to run -- Important News.

Scoop, in other words, was hyperlocal when hyperlocal was cool. I'd argue that despite technological shifts, the world hasn't changed all that much. I could draw about a dozen parallels to this paraphrase on why the early frost can't be left to the burgeoning broadcast media:

Those farmers all have mortgages, but they don't all have radios and televisions.

Every medium is important; content is king, queen and ace; and local is what matters. Even the big-city editor could see it.

God Bless Scoop... And us too.

Comments

[patrick sweeney]

Hey, gang, I am the modern day "Big Scoop" of this country. I'm not a newsman anymore, nor a politician, but I still have my opinion's, and I could put this country back together again. Please check-out my Christian reading, non-fiction, FREE website, and please, as a gag, share this information with any who might listen. Maybe I could do something, but not in Illinois or Chicago, the most corrupt places of them all. Thank you, Pat Sweeney.

P.S. Mike Royko has already written me up, and I did work at the Chicago Sun-Times for a few years. I served in the Marines, and I am a loyal Catholic. Please, "Help!"