The Anna Nicole Smith Story

We watched together in class as the Anna Nicole Smith story started to break. Huge coverage across all the major media players. Was it over the top and too much, we asked ourselves.

Investigative report Diane Dimond thinks so, and she had a very interesting conversation with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik, discussing the matter.

ZURAWIK: You know, we are so bad in the media today. When the public really cares about a story the way they cared about the O.J. story -- you know, I experienced a little of this when I wrote about the Anna Nicole thing. There was a lot of back and forth -- should we treat it this way, should we treat -- listen, the public cares about something this much, we ought to not be above it. We ought to try -- now, there's way to explain it. Help us understand why we care about it.

DIMOND: But five straight hours? ...If a less popular person died, and it wasn't Anna Nicole, the sexpot -- say it was Dick Cheney. I guarantee you he would not get five straight hours of coverage on MSNBC or a full hour on "20/20."

Read the whole CNN interview transcript here.

Related: Houston Chronicle ombudsman James Campbell in his About:Chron blog writes that he thinks the Chronicle set a new low in running a lengthy A1 story on Smith and her alleged long-running lesbian affair with an older Texas woman.