When You Become the Lead Story

We are closing in on the sixth anniversary of the debut of this blog. I posted my first “American Currents” commentary on Nov. 6, 2009.

At that point, it was the brainchild of Jeff Weiss -- though I coined the name -- and the shared production of an array of writers. Jeff wanted to establish a forum for voices across the political and social spectra to comment on breaking news and issues of the day.

For six months, half a dozen of us traded off posting on topics Jeff assigned to us: everything from charging children for adult crimes (here’s the news story to which I was responding), to a sexting tragedy (background), a tweeting Mom who posted online updates about her two-year-old son’s drowning, and my initial reaction to the blockbuster movie “Avatar.”

Over the ensuing months, some bloggers dropped away, and others came on to replace them. But aside from myself, nobody could keep up the steady pace, and the endeavor petered out in April 2010. I picked it up again in May, and have mostly had the space to myself ever since.

Though with regular months-long breaks, I’ve talked about everything from a purported near-bombing by a supposed Muslim terrorist here in Portland to my budding acting career. I’ve inveighed against the overuse of mobile devices (repeatedly), celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage in Oregon, and offered my advice to high school students on how to choose a college.

Occupy Portland/Occupy Wall Street was a big story that pretty much landed in my lap when the protesters’ camp set up shop eight blocks from my apartment and served as fodder for a dozen or more blog posts.

Apart from my blogging, my name has occasionally appeared in the local newspaper with calendar notes about my literature readings, or a guest column about my book group or my longtime habit of reading while walking the streets.

I never expected to be the top story on the local TV news, however. This week the local news media came to our door. On Wednesday my wife became the talk of the city for 24 hours or so, after a cyclist knocked her down and cracked four ribs, chipped a vertebra, and separated her shoulder. Not a huge news story, you would think, but it played big because of where it happened, because the incident was captured dramatically on video, and (probably) because otherwise it was a proverbial “slow news night.”

Now that the media storm has died down, I’ve thought about the many lessons we learned: about local government agencies, about health care, about how the news media works, and about our fragile, mortal bodies.

Since my wife and I were at the center of it all, I’m the best equipped to talk about it -- especially the aspects of the story that never came up on the blogs, the radio, and the TV reports as well as in the local daily newspaper -- and this is the place to do it.

But first, if you don’t know the basic facts, the story first broke Wednesday morning, Oct. 21 (it seems like weeks ago now), when BikePortland.org, a local blog for cyclists, posted some comments I’d emailed to the publisher the preceding Friday night (Oct. 16).

By the end of the day, it was all over the TV news -- principally the local NBC affiliate, KGW Channel 8, which ran it as a lead story at 5, 6, and 7 o’clock; but the local Fox News station, KPTV, also interviewed Carole and aired its versions of the story at 10 and 11 o’clock.

Take a look at those accounts, then in part two we’ll move to the various backstories.