Everyone enjoys a good story...and one of the most shared is the evening news. From early newsreels to the tv news, there has been agreement as to what makes a "good" news story-who the main characters are, where the action is, how the plot evolves. Some of the earliest films were of news events; termed "actualities," they purported to show the world as it was. But as Early Films of Interest shows, only a small fragment of the world was considered "of interest": famous people, violence and catastrophes, sports, and staged events, such as speeches, parades and press conferences-the mainstays of newscasts to this day. This reel of early news coverage includes footage of the funeral of Queen Victoria, the San Francisco earthquake, the first Wright flight in France, as well as a recreation of a famous prize fight. While distinctions continue to be made between objective and subjective treatments and documentary and fictional forms, in practice, things aren't so simple. Through the staging of events for the camera, the selection and editing of footage, and the scripting of commentary, the news has a fictive element; it is less about an "actuality," than a story about reality. We stay tuned for upcoming "news stories," not "news facts". The narrative conventions implicit in storytelling, whether anecdotal, fictional, or news, are the subject of Nina Fonoroff's The Big Story. The soundtrack, a circular cycle of stories about stories, consists of fragmentary statements complexly intercut with comments from a speech by Spiro Agnew; and together with the densely worked image track, literally layers public and private realms, fictional and documentary renderings into a fantastic story about "a small group of men". Ken Jacobs describes his Perfect Film as a "TV newscast discard, 1965; reprinted as found maybe in a Canal Street bin, I guess, with the exception of boosting volume second half." In it, an eyewitness reports on an assassination attempt to various news organizations. In take after take, he relates what he has seen. In the re-telling, the qualifications ("seems to be...") disappear and his story, the so-called facts take shape. When an official gives his version of the "news to date," he stumbles, and then begins again at the beginning. In this unedited version, we witness the power of access to the media to literally control one's image. In The Amarillo News Tapes, Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter, "Artists-in-Residence" at KV11-TV in Amarillo, Texas, report on the local news, sports and weather...and the operation of a small town news agency. Their presentation emphasizes the act of presenting-the delivery of a sentence, the "correct" emphasis of a word, the cause/effect construction of a story, the selection of action images-and foregrounds not only the anchor and reporter as performer, but the performance of the video image. -Kathy Geritz