A great read for the latter-winter reading list: Amusing Ourselves to Death.
The older version seems to be out-of-print, so its the library or...
This idea - that there is a content called "the news of the day" - was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event.
Although the author goes on to lament the decline of the Age of Typography allow me to introduce the notion of a neo-Age of Typography for mass media orphans as evidenced by forums such as Free Republic.