Courtesy of Newsweek
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter has a personal and moving cover story in this week's magazine: The story of his cancer. Alter was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma three years ago and is, thankfully, now in remission. Cancer has taken the spotlight these last few weeks with both Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow announcing that their respective cancers have returned — provoking a bi-partisan (nay, non-partisan) outpouring of sympathy and good wishes (well, for the most part, some people). Alter recounts his experience from when he first heard the news, knocking him sideways. He recounts the experience from "the daze of diagnosis" through the tests to see exactly what he had (a painful bone-marrow extraction revealed he was at Stage 4 lymphoma, the most aggressive kind) and then through his bone-marrow transplant in August of 2004 as well as chemo at Sloan-Kettering (he had "the most toxic" kind, which lowered his white blood cell count to zero). In between he talks of how he told his children (stumbingly and in a fog of panic) and how he managed to keep working ("banging out" a column from the hospital; hitting the 2004 DNC with a catheter in his chest; being ordered off internet cancer sites by his wife with a tough-love admonition of "get back to work!"). Just one guy's story, multiplied by 10.5 million.
The issue's cover package on cancer also featured Lance Armstrong agitating for more research (like Marisa Marchetto does here on HuffPo), Jonathan Alter interviewing Elizabeth Edwards (the reader is reminded that Edwards' cancer is not the worst thing that has happened to her: They lost their 16-year old son, Wade, in a car crash 11 years ago, which is clearly devastating), and a similarly lump-in-throat essay from Eleanor Clift about the loss of her husband from cancer two years ago. Moving stuff.
As we noted last week, however, the moving stuff may not move — at least not in the blogosphere. As it stands now, Newsweek's cancer cover story has only 39 links on Technorati, despite the big "gets" here, the highly current nature of the story and the fact that it is such a universal. Surprising, but really, so what? That doesn't mean people aren't reading it; it may just be the case that human interest stories about the news don't get pickup without being news themselves (this is something I have noticed before). Or it may be that the blogosphere is about debate and there's really nothing to debate about these stories (they are sad, they are heartbreaking; who wants to argue with that?). Either way, it seems that sometimes there's what you think is the most amazing story, and then, in Choire Sicha's words, "the internets shrug." Maybe they'd rather blog about Sanjaya, maybe they'd rather read and absorb it in print. Either way, it's another example of the divergent sensibilities of print readership and those of the blogosphere.
Living With Cancer in America [Newsweek]
Related:
Pulitzer bait, and no one's biting [FishbowlNY]
NYT mag Tsunami story makes no waves [FishbowlNY]
