This is the first cup from my new coffee maker. The old coffee maker dripped coffee when the decanter wasn’t in place, and I decided to spend part of my Target gift card on a new, cleaner machine. This first pot isn’t as strong as I would like, but perhaps in time the coffee maker will get worn in, not unlike how burgers taste better from older grills instead of new ones.

I have not yet started work on my manuscripts. I spent the afternoon watching the coverage of Congresswoman Gifford’s shooting. (Is it too soon to call it an assassination attempt?) A few thoughts about the coverage:

1. Not one of the big three networks interrupted their coverage of sporting events to report on the shooting. To use the vernacular of my students, that was a total fail. One of our elected federal servants was tragically attacked today, but decisions were made not to interrupt the football and basketball broadcasts. Unacceptable.

2. Since I couldn’t get coverage from the TV networks, I checked cnn.com, msnbc.com, and foxnews.com for updates. I clicked between all three to see if the pages would reload with new information, and kept getting discouraged when they would not update fast enough. All three of those sites failed in comparison to huffingpost.com’s live blog. I hope we don’t have another national tragedy anytime soon, but if we do my first stop online will be to The Huffington Post.

3. NPR reported Congresswoman Gifford’s death during the 2:00 ET news break. It seems they got that information from the sheriff’s office. (CNN, msnbc.com, and Reuters also reported her death shortly thereafter.) Typically, the sheriff’s office is a solid source for information in crime stories, so it was not unacceptable to run with that information. Still, I am curious if NPR will modify its standards for reporting the deaths of political figures.

When I worked for CNN in the late 1990s, we had a list of prominent persons whose deaths were basically imminent, such as President Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. There were specific instructions laid out for the producers on who to verify for the deaths of each person. For instance, there was a particular office or representative from The Vatican who had to be contact to affirm that the Pope had died, and a specific representative from either President Reagan or Nancy Reagan’s staff who would verify his death. If those persons had not verified the death, despite rumors to the contrary, CNN would not report that they had died.