I don’t often write blog entries based on dreams that I’ve had, but one of my dreams last night seemed very applicable. It metaphorically asked, where to ‘hot’ stories come from in the media?

Back when I was in college, I led groups of students on tours of the heating tunnels on campus. The school had a large plant on the south east side of campus that among other things provided steam to the buildings across campus. There were tunnels all over the campus where people could go down and work on the pipes. If you knew where the entrances were, wanted a little bit of a different type of excitement on a weekend evening, and weren’t afraid to get a little dirty and sweaty, you could see a different side of campus that most people never saw.

This wasn’t a sanctioned activity and the heating tunnel spelunkers were known to show up at unexpected places, sometimes resulting in requests to show up at the Dean of Student Affairs office as well.

In my dream, I was showing friends, particularly from groups like the Media Giraffe Project or the Action Coalition for Media Education the heating tunnels of the media establishment. I don’t remember the details of the dream other than there were tricks about turning on more powerful lights as well as helping one person remove a spider that had gotten stuck in her hair. I’m sure that these were all symbols for something bigger going on, but I’m not sure I know exactly what it is.

So, what makes one story hot and another one get almost no coverage? I’m not sure I know, but let me provide a couple illustrations. Last week, Fox News ran a story (NewsTrust) about possible terrorist threats related to the health of an imprisoned terrorist. The story noted “the FBI said there is no credible indication that a plan for retribution is in place”. What makes this report important?

Meanwhile, news about police taking cameras from citizen journalists in New York or information about a forum on fair elections in New Hampshire gets little coverage.

Yes, it was just a dream that people start looking at the dirty underside of how stories become hot in our media, but dreams our powerful things. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has inspired millions, and this little dream is perhaps not as far from becoming real as people might think. After all, you are Time Magazine’s person of the year. You are changing the media landscape.