You Have My Attention
Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene has passed. With floods, power outages, some wrecked hulls, and unfortunate loss of life in her wake, there are plenty of lessons learned. Some in the media seem especially interested the question of a better balance between pre-storm hype and the need for preparedness. As for me, I am inclined to focus on an indisputable lesson: hurricanes, especially those that head for New York City, galvanize public attention like nothing else. In this, I see opportunity. We may be an attention deficit society, but that wasn't the case leading to Irene. In recognizing this, I ask: isn't there a way we can harness this collective focus?
Consider last week: whenever I logged onto my computer, the lead story on the search browser – Irene. TV, be it the Weather Channel or local news? Irene. I didn't check, but my guess is the recent episode of "Bridezilla" featured weddings that occur during hurricanes. Even PBS was likely searching its files for a Ken Burns documentary on the '38 Hurricane. Radio? Irene. Ads? Irene. Conversation in the check-out line? Irene. Conversation at the water cooler? Yup. On and on. And you know what? The public listened. We were galvanized. Doppler radar, predictive paths, science concerning winds at sky scraper heights, we knew it all. Millions of us were listening and listening really well.
The intensity of Irene coverage wasn't limited to the media. Governor Christie of New Jersey was heard over the airwaves, saying: "I saw some of these news feeds that I've been watching upstairs of people sitting on the beach in Asbury Park. Get the hell off the beach in Asbury Park and get out," Christie said. "You're done. It's 4:30. You've maximized your tan. Get off the beach. Get in your cars and get out of those areas." Imagine, a straght-talking elected official. And something tells me they did get the hell off the beach.
As a nation, we're pretty smart folks. It just happens that we're easily distracted and we don't address anything until it becomes catastrophic. Let's just admit this as a given and let's use Hurricane Irene level reporting to get everyone focused, if only for one week. We could use this collective energy to correct any number of societal problems. Take your pick: Do you think it's time we get serious about the environment? Then lets create an intense week of related news, complete with computer graphics, statistics, expert predictions, and a few tell it like it is politicians. Hell, we might even be able to create some headway in solving our economic problems if we all pay fierce attention for a week.
So there it is, my take-away from Hurricane Irene. And in the meantime, I suppose I'll head back to the beach before summer ends, book in hand, glad that Irene's destruction wasn't worse.
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