Column - Chasing Fame

My BlackBerry buzzed around 2:30 Friday afternoon with a Gazette text alert that Tiger Woods had been seriously injured in an auto accident. When it buzzed about 15 minutes later, I assumed the worst.

Turns out he had been released from the hospital. Thankfully, we didn't add to this year's astounding tally of celebrity misfortune.

It immediately made me think back to a Saturday night in 1997 when I was news editor at the Messenger in Fort Dodge. An Associated Press alert flashed that Princess Diana had been in a car wreck in Paris. I went to work remaking the front page as deadline loomed.

The remade page carried a big headline telling readers that Diana had been seriously injured. We printed it out, pasted it up and sent it to a van waiting in the back alley to take the pages to the presses in Webster City.

I walked back into the newsroom and looked at CNN. Diana was dead.

I turned and ran though the building and into the alley. The van was pulling away, but the driver saw me waving my arms like a mad man. Brake lights. Just in time.

I pulled the front page out of the van, ran upstairs and replaced “seriously injured” with “dead.” We were late, but we were right.

Fame makes us come running. Would I have sprinted out the back door to change a local accident story on page 3? I'd like to think so. But I know better.

That initial Friday Tiger alert gave me that same big-news tingle, a curious cocktail of shock, curiosity, dread and adrenaline. And it's the impulse that made me want more details about the accident, even when I know damn well that it's really none of my business. Leave them alone. No, wait, tell me more.

And we guilty gawkers got a bipolar view of fame in the past few days.

There was Tiger, arguably the most famous athlete in the world, seeking precious privacy with news vultures hovering. At the other end of the spectrum were Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who crashed a White House dinner with hopes of gaining fame and fortune through reality TV.

Instead, the crashers set off a firestorm over security and reality and even the competency of a White House that was just trying to serve some fancy green curry prawns and roasted potato dumplings. The couple skipped dinner. We were served an endless loop of their photos, laughing with Obama, buddy-buddy with Biden.

Tiger achieved fame through years of hard work. The Salahis were simply shameless enough to attract attention and cameras. In 2009, both paths lead to the front page. And we come running.

Contact the writer at (319) 398-8452 or todd.dorman@gazcomm.com