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An eight-lane Interstate highway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening rush hour yesterday, too late for the networks' east coast nightly newscasts. The failure of the 40-year-old span was so dramatic and deadly--as many as 30 motorists may have been killed as they plunged 64 feet into the water--that it was a dominant Story of the Day. All three anchors were on the scene in Minnesota. With a total of 45 minutes of coverage on the three newscasts combined this single story accounted for 76% of the entire newshole. It was the third biggest Story of the Day of 2007 so far--behind only the first two days of coverage of April's murder-suicide spree on the Virginia Tech campus.

CBS and ABC each led its newscasts with its anchor's own reporting. ABC's Charles Gibson took us along on a helicopter ride to view the destruction from the air. CBS' Katie Couric--who used a crisper than usual newsy style in her newscasts earlier in the week--reverted to morning-show-style human interest for her lead. She concentrated on the "night of unimaginable anxiety" suffered by a pair of sisters who feared that their sibling was one of the unidentified motorists who had plummeted to her death--only to reveal lamely at the end of her story that their fears were unfounded and the sister was alive.

There are two markers of a really big news story. The first is when it is given a logo: ABC chose Disaster on the River; CBS Twin Cities Tragedy; NBC Tragedy in Minnesota. The second is that network anchors feel compelled to close their newscasts with reflection, a commentary on the day's events. All three complied: NBC's Brian Williams speculated on whether infrastructure, "not a sexy topic," would become an issue in Campaign 2008 as a result of this bridge collapse; ABC's Gibson (no link) touched on weighty questions of theodicy by citing Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey; CBS' Couric concluded that it is just not right that bridges fall down: "When we are driving over a bridge, we should be able to think about what we are going to do that night, not whether we will live to see another day."

Andrew Tyndall 8/3/07 8:52:08 pm

A reader observes:

As for Couric's opening story with the two sisters, I personally didn't think whether their loved one was alive or dead really impacted the meaning of the story. The story illustrated the emotional stress and fears that so many people suffered through in the immediate aftermath of the collapse. Just because their story had a happy ending and they were fortunate compared to others doesn't diminish the point of the story.
- Andrew Tyndall 08-04-2007 01:44 pm

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