At the time of writing, a big red banner on msnbc.com announces that Micha Murray has been sentenced. But looking at some other outlets, there's no "breaking news." At the same time msnbc.com was trumpeting the verdict, Reuters was emphasizing Tehran and the New York Times had the latest campaign news about Herman Cain front-and-center. But among broadcast news, the emphasis of Murray's sentencing was the norm: see these screenshots of CNN, CBS News and ABC News. USA Today was one of the few newspapers I found with coverage.
Some of this is due to the constraints of their media. Broadcasters can show you the trial live and it makes for reasonably good TV. The stories Reuters and the New York Times emphasized, could be told well in pictures and words. More important, though, is the audience, as USA Today shows. It is still mostly a newspaper, a text and photos business. But it still features the trial.
I think a similar issue is behind msnbc.com's intense focus. As I have learned, msnbc.com emphasizes domestic news and stories that a broad audience will find interesting. People care a lot about Michael Jackson, so the twists and turns of the trial of the doctor implicated in his death interest them. But generally, people don't care that much about the primaries. And they don't care that much about Tehran, either. So to a certain extent, this editorial decision is all about giving people what they want.
Before I paint a too negative picture, let me add a third reason. Broadcast outlets, particularly msnbc.com and CNN, pride themselves on up-to-the-minuteness. Newspapers, while still aiming for timeliness, often try to be more comprehensive or to find a unique angle. That isn't to say broadcast news doesn't do those or that newspapers don't do breaking news. Rather, because of the history and technical aspects of broadcast and print news, broadcasters are more often going to break stories and newspapers are more often going to give them a detailed look.
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