How news becomes news

Tim Porter at First Draft takes a look at why it took so long for the Abu Ghraib abuse to become high-profile: The abuse at Abu Ghraib became a big story when "60 Minutes" broadcast the photographs.

Media reports had surfaced months before without the photos, and the news organizations (CNN and the New York Times) didn't follow up on their initial reports. Porter argues: "To make a difference, newspapers must differentiate themselves from the crowd. If they don't, they're destined to continue writing Page 1 stories whose first graph contains the words "according to 60 Minutes" or "Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker."