Not being the story is best

A national story washed through Carson Valley this week with the disappearance of famed aviator Steve Fossett.

There's nothing like a flood to test the seaworthiness of a vessel and there is no better description for the rush of media which arrived at the Minden-Tahoe Airport on Tuesday after The Record-Courier broke the story.

Any reporter in the world with a phone and an Internet search engine was calling the airport to get all the information there was on Fossett's disappearance.

Unfortunately, the folks doing the media work for the Fossett search were down the street at the Civil Air Patrol.

One thing we learned from Tuesday's experience is that the appetite for immediate news drives a lot of folks to call people around the area who may or may not be qualified to talk about the issue.

We received a dozen calls from media outlets around the world wanting to talk with someone on the air about what was going on.

What we knew was on the Web and we didn't feel comfortable talking about Fossett or the search without having more in the way of original information.

For a few hours on Tuesday morning when people were looking for news about Fossett, the world revolved around Minden.

But here at The Record-Courier, we're not the story and we're perfectly happy not being the story for the future.