I've been mulling over the question of what Americans consider "news." That is, when we go to the evening news programs, pick up the daily paper, or peruse a periodical, what are we looking for? What do we want to know, and why?

Just as important, how do the people who deliver the news determine what they ought to pass along? The process of selecting and reporting news is a kind of guessing game, fouled by advertizing, in which the news producers and the news consumers seek to correlate their concerns to the benefit of both.

Most news seems to have a basis either in violence, politics, economics, or scandal.