After observing that C.S. Lewis died the same day as President Kennedy (a fact I similarly was unaware of), James Joyner notes how the amount of media coverage an event garners is contingent on whether or not other events overshadow it:
What’s particularly fascinating to me is how much this illustrates the power of the news cycle. Comparatively minor events a congressman’s affair with an employee, the murder of a child beauty queen) can become huge news stories if they take place during slow news periods. Conversely, rather major stories can get buried if they coincide with a hot story.
One wonders, for example, what happened on September 11, 2001 and the week or so thereafter that virtually no one knows about. Newspapers come out every day, regardless of whether there is anything exciting to put in them. Ditto nightly newscasts and the 24 hour news channels. The airtime gets filled with something every day.
This works both ways, of course. Often public figures deliberately release unfavorable announcements at a low point in the news cycle (e.g., Friday night) to minimize the public splash it makes.