The Kingdom was in Chaos
By Royal Decree
By Dean Rotbart
The kingdom was in chaos.
The Court Spokesman had run off with the Third Lady in Waiting and now there was no one to pronounce what was and what wasn't newsworthy.
All the royal news presses rolled to a halt. Only a picture of the King, wise and stately, filled the screens of the three official television news channels. Even the nightly jousting scores were held in abeyance. Popular as they were, who was to say if they merited the designation "newsworthy" now that the Court Spokesman had flown the castle?
The King was in a bind.
His people looked to him for leadership, which he typically provided aplenty. When the Malatians invaded Char, the King knew he must send his best troops quickly or risk loosing forever the fertile Charian fields. When the Great Drought of '21 threatened to scorch the entire season's wheat crop, the King had the Royal Engineers design a thoroughly innovative canal to carry water from the Standish Provinces. His noble actions were rewarded not only with a great financial harvest, but with the profound gratitude of his people.
Be it etiquette, economics, military strategy or social engineering, the King was clearly the master of his fiefdom.
Yet the King this night paced the Royal Bed Chamber, knowing the one subject he knew not a thing about was the news business. That had always been the Court Spokesman's responsibility.
From the time the King was but a prince in knickers, his father had lectured him on the importance of controlling the news as a means of controlling the populace.
"As long as there are strict rules concerning what is and what is not newsworthy, there is order," his Grand Royal Highness would explain. "Everyone in society knows his and her place. If you are a member of the ruling class, you are by birthright more newsworthy than the peasants. If you are a Royal manufacturer, you get more press coverage than one who hasn't received our seal of approval."
The system worked so well that on those very rare occasions when a Royal subject actually complained that he wasn't getting the news coverage he deserved, the Court Spokesman could simply point to the Royal News Pyramid and demonstrate that the complainer got exactly the news allotment to which he was entitled, nothing less and nothing more.
A perfect kingdom!
Now all that was gone.
The King summoned his wise counselors and bravest knights to consider responses to the crisis. Lady Aircott called for the immediate capture and imprisonment of the Kingdom's fugitive Court Spokesman. "Love be damned," she cursed. "The Court Spokesman owes his heart first and foremost to the King."
Sir Parador recommended a stealth invasion of nearby Fort Amendment to capture their Court Spokesman and instill his news judgment in the Kingdom.
But neither Lady Aircott nor Sir Parador nor any of the other advisers seemed to the King to have the correct solution. So the King dismissed them all and retired to his personal quarters.
Reflexively, as he did each night, the King picked up the remote control and flipped on the TV to catch the day's events before some light reading and Royal cocoa and dreams. But all that the King saw on his favorite news channel this night was his own kindly face starring right back at him from behind the glass screen.
It was the biggest crisis in his 18-year reign and there was no one to declare it newsworthy.
PART TWO:
Days and weeks past and still no one could come up with a definition or formula for defining the news.
Reports were filtering back to the castle of peasants who were unilaterally and unashamedly declaring themselves newsworthy and offering unsolicited interviews to the Royal Journalists.
Other subjects had begun to panic.
The Royal Tiremaker sent word to the King that it had put out a news release on its quarterly production figures and although the release clearly met the definition of newsworthiness established previously by the Court Spokesman, no one printed it.
"With all due respect," wrote the Tiremaker's chairman, "we believe we have been done a great injustice by the Kingdom for failure to validate our obviously newsworthy news release. We seek just compensation."
The King obliged.
Soon the line outside the Royal Treasury office had grown longer than the eye could see. Glassmakers and blacksmiths, bakers and semi-conductor makers, rail men and salesmen, teachers and preachers. They all came seeking compensation for the failure of the Kingdom to print or broadcast their newsworthy news releases.
The Kingdom that had withstood drought and war, famine and pestilence, was now in danger of bankruptcy over the lack of a universally accepted definition of news.
Alas and alack, the King could wait not a daylonger. He sent forth word that at precisely 5 p.m., from the balcony of the Royal Courtyard, he would emerge to proclaim once and forevermore the official and indisputable definition of news.
The people of the kingdom gathered by the thousands to await the Royal decree. All the kingdom's journalists were on hand, anxious to resume reporting the official news. Even the peasants who had the audacity to declare themselves newsworthy stopped their rantings to attend the King's proclamation.
At exactly the appointed hour, the Royal Trumpeters let forth their ceremonious flourishes and the crowd quieted to a complete silence. The wind blew and the curtains on the Royal Balcony fluttered.
But the King never emerged.
Instead, out walked a rather meek manservant, shaky and with the voice of a sparrow.
The man servant unrolled a parchment, cleared his throat, and read....
"His Royal Highness, Master and Ruler of all of the territories of Byznez and Endusdrie, Beloved Monarch and Father, hereby decrees that from this date forward the definition of newsworthy shall be . . ."
A simultaneous gasp arose from the crowd, awaiting at long last the official word.
"News is what the newsmakers say it is."
Thus with one Royal decree, which in time would come to be seen as one of the great legacies of the King, his Majesty transferred responsibility for deciding what is newsworthy from the governors to the governed.
And so was born a free press and a truly competitive public relations industry.
To this day, of course, there are many who still cling to the hope that one day the Court Spokesman will return and that news will once again meet a neat, clear, singular definition.
Indeed, although the crowds have diminished, each day numerous business and professional people line up outside the King's Royal Treasury office hoping for compensation, or at least sympathy, because their newsworthy news releases were not published or broadcast.
The office, however, closed a long, long time ago.
July 15, 2002
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