"Gatekeeping is like..."

My first semester in college, my (crazy) journalism professor said many memorable things. And, as funny and seemingly unimportant as they might be, I still remember many of the things he said simply because they were relevant.

For instance, he said, "Gatekeeping is like getting pregnant."

And, as I worked through my second day at KAKE-TV, I saw that philosophy in practice.

The whole idea behind "gatekeeping" is that the editors, managers, reporters, etc., have to decide which stories get covered and which stories get the most priority.

Ultimately, despite this vast field of ideas, only a few get through the gate. (Now, perhaps, you understand the correlation my professor suggested.)

In the first hour of the day, we covered several of the potential stories for the evening's broadcasts -- many of which involved local damage from the previous night's storm. We bounced around a few ideas -- some were pushed aside, some were given priority. The big stories of the day involved the local storms, and rightfully so.

In the afternoon -- after driving around in more bipolar Kansas weather -- I was giving the task of uploading stories from The Associated Press on to the KAKE website.

Many of the stories, I felt, were interesting and relevant. As most of them were international stories, I felt that I was learning a lot even as I uploaded the stories.

There was a charter plane crash in India that killed 10 people. Budapest named Elvis Presley an honorary citizen. Police discovered a bar in Mexican jail that was serving inmates alcohol. There were riots and protests in Georgia. The Paraguayan president had been cured of his cancer.

There were so many stories! And after a while, the words on the screen began to bleed into one another.

One of the reporters saw me working and jokingly told me, "Don't look so serious."

Yet, even as fast as I was able to upload a story, the AP kept sending in more and more stories. The AP also had stories sent in during the afternoon that hadn't been uploaded yet. Some of them were important -- others, it seemed, were not.

Even though multiple reporters, editors, and content managers had passed these stories around, some of them would still never make it to our website, because of one simple reason: TIME.

Ultimately, time is the greatest gatekeeper of them all. Is there enough time to upload these stories? To edit them? To write them? Sometimes the clock doesn't allow all of the news to get out.

But, on the other hand, time also constricts things with what is going on at the moment. Yesterday, coverage of the severe weather bumped several stories from the evening news broadcasts. Time was not on our side in that situation either. What is going on right NOW? What are people concerned with at this MOMENT?

Time is definitely the greatest gatekeeper. Often, it's why audiences never get to hear or see those really great stories -- because there's not enough time.

But, when there is the time -- to write the story, to photograph the story, to edit the story, to publish or broadcast the story, to post the story online -- it makes it all worthwhile.

Even if that only time is on "Good Morning Kansas."