"Be careful when you pass away."

So advised PBS broadcast journalist Aaron Brown during a conversation we had in the midst of the recent crazy news cycle. Several stories leapfrogged one another, culminating in the news of Michael Jackson's death.

In his final act as King of Pop, Jackson nearly exploded the Internet. News Web sites saw a spike in traffic and stuttering connection speeds. ("My computer is having a very difficult time right now," Fox News' Shepard Smith said in the heat of the coverage.)

In the 36 hours after Jackson's death, cable networks dedicated 93 percent of their coverage to memorializing the icon. Twitter boasted double the normal number of tweets per second. AOL Instant Messenger shut down for 40 minutes in the wake of what it called "a seminal moment in Internet history" unrivaled "in terms of scope or depth." At one point, 38 of the top 100 selling songs on iTunes and eight of the top 10 albums were Jackson works.

Jackson's death was the latest proof of the breakneck speed of news and information today. The reality is that a lot of hard news — stories lacking the salacious intrigue of Jackson's untimely passing — got lost in the shuffle.

Consider: Ed McMahon's signature "Hey-o!" was a distant echo 48 hours after his death. After Farrah Fawcett spent years pinned to the bedroom walls of red-blooded American males, her death barely lasted a few hours atop news Web sites. The U.S. House's passage of sweeping climate-change legislation was relegated to below the fold. That just days before a major pullback of U.S. troops in Iraq.

All paled in comparison with the Michael Jackson saga.

This was good news of sorts for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. Fifteen years ago, Sanford might have minimized his own embarrassing story by waiting to get off that plane during a Friday rush hour. Now, it takes a miracle — or a pop-culture tragedy — to shift people's attention.

The Friday "news dump" used to be a standard crisis-management tactic. Remember the Saturday Night Massacre? The series of events that culminated with the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus were launched after an ill-fated Friday night announcement by Richard Nixon.

The remnants of the strategy remain. Last month, the Philadelphia Board of Ethics fined its own executive director $500 for violating a confidentiality rule. The board announced the fine at 5 p.m. the Friday before Memorial Day. The McCain campaign last year granted access to the senator's copious medical records on the Friday heading into Memorial Day weekend.

Bernard Kerik's withdrawal of his nomination to head the Department of Homeland Security? The Starr report on President Clinton? All released in the dead of Friday.

Indeed, according to research released in January 2005, corporate earnings announcements released on Fridays were 20 percent more likely to be negative and even more likely (25 percent) to falter next to expectations. Presidents, meanwhile, were found to be 25 percent less likely to sign favorable legislation between Friday and Monday.

The difference in today's climate, however, is the grueling 24/7 pace of the new media news cycle. And Jackson's death — a story first confirmed by TMZ.com — is the most recent illustration of the sheer horsepower of that cycle, which can make the morning paper on your doorstep full of old news.

As Stephen Quigley, an associate professor of public relations at Boston University, told me, news cycles can no longer be manipulated by timing the release for weekends or holidays. Now, the only thing that really obscures the news is the next big thing.

"Social media never sleep," Quigley said. "Twitter can give an ugly story legs long enough for the mainstream media to catch up. Friday's are so yesterday."

Mark Sanford wasn't hoping for a tragic death, but he still benefited from the shifting storyline. And there's no benefit to shortchanging the news about Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Billy Mays; or important legislation in Congress; or the work of Gen. Ray Odierno and the U.S. troops in Iraq.

Their stories were left to a digital dustbin.

Michael Smerconish is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.