Maybe He's Found the Secret Formula

CNN-US president Jonathan Klein lets the St. Petersburg Times in on the rationale behind the network's coverage of the current Middle East crisis:

"Viewers have short attention spans. They tend to tire of a story and they tend to feel they know the story backward and forward, unless a news organization can provide a layered sense of what is behind the story," he said. "You could cover this as a series of rockets fired between one side and another ... (but) we're trying to combine visceral coverage with analysis from intelligent people and academia."

Dear Mr. Klein: If it works, you might try the same formula on the New Orleans story. CNN viewers are still waiting for the "layered sense" of what is behind the failure of the levees and floodwalls.