OJ Simpson is dead. For Americans of a certain age, that’s about the only obituary needed. The rest of the OJ story was hammered into our frontal lobes nonstop for months during a double murder trial that rewrote (or maybe, removed) the rules of news coverage. The Simpson trial marked the first wholly captivating, single news topic covered 24-7 at the expense of all other news. Needless to say, that legacy lives on. I came of age during the Nightline era, when Ted Koppel remade the news landscape, covering the Iran hostage crisis for 444 days. One story. The same story. Every night. During the early days, Koppel’s show was called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage. And we were, by a news story. That show started in 1979. The next year, CNN brought us twenty-four hour cable news. This was back before opinion panels took over, when cable news anchors spent the majority of each hour throwing it to far-flung reporters in the field, who covered a wide variety of stories. It didn’t take long for cable news execs to realize Americans liked to focus on one story at a time, and that it was often a lot cheaper to provide that kind of coverage. It started with the Gulf War, broadcast live around the clock, from the time the first bombs dropped. That war put CNN on the map, and it put single-story coverage in the money. And then, in 1995, a singular sensation drove through our living rooms in a white Ford Bronco, with OJ Simpson sitting in the passenger seat. It’s hard to describe to younger folks how fully captivated we were by that news story. Well, it was hard to describe before we were besieged by Trump news, starting with birtherism and a lie about an inauguration crowd size and ending with … well, I’ll let you know when we get there. The Donald Trump era is the equivalent of OJ’s white Ford Bronco chase lasting nine straight years, and counting. There’s a certain historic symmetry in the fact that OJ died just as Trump’s first criminal trial is about to start. Let’s hope the the outcome of the Trump trials aren’t as outrageous as the OJ verdict. But as anyone who witnessed that trial can attest, stranger things have happened.

+ For a look back at this incredible moment that revealed and foreshadowed our relationship with news, race, and trials. watch the excellent documentary series: OJ: Made in America.