The objectifier who took on a shine of his own

Recall the constituent elements of Shiny Object Theory:

1.  The observation that news-media attention (as distributed across the near-infinite set of all possible stories) exhibits temporal comovement:  many news outlets will feature essentially the same story (or set of stories) all at about the same time, very often within the same week.

2.  The mild claim that this outcome is not the product of random chance:  it is driven by competitive forces, both internal and external to the news industry.

3.  The capper:  by generating coordinated waves of temporary news attention, this process of competition can drive long-lasting societal or political outcomes.

Newsweek's Weston Kosova went looking for the competitive forces at play in the Don Imus affair.  Here is his effort to trace the thread:

26-year-old Ryan Chiachiere wasn't a fan, and he wasn't tuning in to be entertained.  Chiachiere is one of a handful of young activists who spend their days wading through hours of radio and cable shows for Media Matters for America, a liberal group whose sole purpose is rooting out and "correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."  Wired on coffee, Chiachiere was watching a recording of Imus's show when he noticed the "hos" remark...

The group posted a video clip of the exchange on its Web site and put it up on YouTube.  It sent e-mails to journalists and civil-rights and women's groups...

Young black journalists were among the first to demand that Imus be ousted.  Thursday evening, one day after Imus's comments, Jemele Hill, an ESPN reporter, posted the Media Matters link on the National Association of Black Journalists' e-mail list...  In a matter of hours, black journalists in newsrooms across the country were clicking on it, and getting angry.  The next day the NABJ demanded an apology from Imus, then called for him to be fired.

That gives a good account of elements #1 and #2, but what of #3?  Will the Imus affair drive long-lasting change?  We can't know yet, but Kosova writes (in a parenthetical remark!) that "[t]he Imus saga now joins the O. J. Simpson verdict and Hurricane Katrina as vivid chapters in the story of race in America."  Hm.

Part of me would like to close this out by making some slam-dunk statement to the effect that Don Imus, having made his career in some part by broadcasting snap judgments about people who happen to be in the news that day, has reaped what he helps sow.  It's true that I wouldn't choose to make my living doing what he does, but I really don't even know that the way the journalism industry works is "good" or "bad".  I do believe that the "neutrality" claimed by many journalistic enterprises is a self-serving myth, and thus it seems wise to remember that "the news" is at least partially designed to serve the interests of men and women behind the curtain.  On that ground, there is little cause to be upset at someone like Imus, whose entire enterprise makes it abundantly clear that what he says comes from him.  Then again, Bill O'Reilly is also okay on that ground, and having seen his show I know that I find O'Reilly's enterprise to be irredeemably anti-intellectual.  By contrast, I don't know any more about Imus than what I've read this week, because I've never listened to his show; for sure, though, nothing I've read compels me to seek it out.