GM Closes Saturn

This was breaking news for The Washington Post; the 'announcement' is below

News Alert - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/C7I8XW/P4W03/EDOLHJ/BYOP1B/JS777/ID/t

05:11 PM EDT Wednesday, September 30, 2009

GM to Shut Down Saturn - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/C7I8XW/P4W03/EDOLHJ/BYOP1B/7MHHB/ID/t

Decision is reached after an agreement with Penske Automotive Group Inc. to acquire the car brand fell apart.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/C7I8XW/P4W03/EDOLHJ/BYOP1B/TTEE9/ID/t
w.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/interact/longterm/talk/members.htm#privacy?referrer=email

This is not, in ordinary parlance, a political issue. However, some messages are very political reactions to the closing. But it was breaking news according to the Post. I wanted to be able to compare it with some of the political stories that were and were not breaking news.

The first search, September 30 2009, turned up only 1200 messages. By midnight it had gotten up to only 3719 messages.

[It could be an interesting contrast with Obama announcing $5 billion for health personnel, which was not breaking news according to The Post.]

The figure shows that the messaging spiked and then fell back to a minimal level very quickly.

There were 5773 messages collected -- few were before the announcement, but most after.

The .txt file that can be read by Excel to acquire the data is: gm saturn.txt