A few weeks ago, during the epic non-coverage of the John Edwards scandal, I wrote this:

I’ve been a media editor for many years and can tell you where the vast percentage of “media coverage” comes from. A big story breaks. Cue some upper editor, affecting sagacity and sucking on an imaginary journalistic pipe: “We should really take a look at the media coverage of this!” There was no actual story to do that a reader might find interesting, just, “Let’s take a look at the media coverage!” That’s “media writing” in the most insipid, Howard Kurtzian sense of the term.

Now, with the Edwards embarrassment behind it, big media can go back to the business as usual I described. Here’s the NYT today, with a quarter-page story, hedlined “TV Cameras Turn from G.O.P to Storm,” about how TV is covering  Hurricane Gustav rather than the Republican Convention.

ST. PAUL — The network news anchors, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams, were diverted from here on Sunday, and with them went Senator John McCain’s chance to command the national stage for four nights before a huge television audience.

As it became clear on Sunday morning that Hurricane Gustav had the potential to do enormous damage to the Gulf Coast, the networks began upending their schedules for the Republican National Convention and reassigned many of their stars to a story that they believed had greater news potential.

Since there is nothing interesting to say on the subject beyond the hedline, by the end of the second paragraph, the poor reporter, Jim Rutenberg, has restated the hed’s thesis twice. In the fourth graf, he states it again:

Most of the broadcast networks had been planning to open their morning and evening newscasts on Monday from the floor of a convention hall festooned with signs promoting Mr. McCain’s message, “Country First.” But by midday, executives at the networks had for the most part decided to open their marquee programs from the Gulf Coast, a place that holds embarrassing symbolism for the Republican brand.

… and again, in graf seven:

The networks were careful to say that they still planned to devote an exceptional amount of coverage to the Republican convention, if and when it began in earnest. But, they said, depending on the impact of the storm, the convention was likely to have to share the news stage.

… and graf eight:

For news executives, there was little debate over whether to divert resources to the Gulf Coast as the storm built through Sunday morning.

… and several more times through the rest of the story.

That’s the modern way to cover the media. Over at the Washpost, Howard Kurtz has already bounced back from his humiliating role not just in the non-coverage of the Edwards debacle but his failure to write about the non-coverage. Last week he was back to his old tricks, adding yet another tonguebath of Katie Couric to his portfolio*.

Today, he leaps into action to discuss the implications of this momentous coverage switch, spelling out the mundanity of the decision with typical aplomb and at typical length:

“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” Kate O’Brian, ABC’s senior vice president, said of the decision to send [anchor Charles] Gibson to New Orleans. “Charlie goes where the big news is. . . . I don’t think it’s going to be looked at as a fairness issue when the Republicans are making the same decisions we are.”

By suspending all but minor business functions for Monday’s session, McCain’s team essentially ratified the media’s decision that the mass evacuation ordered in advance of a life-threatening hurricane is, for the moment, a more compelling story.

*The lengthy Couric piece joins others I detailed here. Note how it carefully avoids getting into Couric’s horrific ratings or dwelling on the pathetic one hour a night CBS gave the convention early in the week. Nothing wrong with a beat reporter sucking up to a source, but Couric at this point is one of the walking dead, professionally speaking. Does anyone care about what life is like for the least-watched news person of any consequence on all of television? How does Kurtz pitch the story to his editors? (”I would like to spend the day tagging along with a person whose work is entirely spurious to the event at hand.”) If he doesn’t have any oversight on stories like this, why didn’t he display the same carte blanche during the Edwards affair?