Why does follow-up coverage die after 3-4 days? Is there a structural reason?

Something I've been thinking about — a major story breaks (factory disaster, corruption scandal, court verdict, policy announcement) and

it gets wall-to-wall coverage for 72 hours. Then it's gone.

The follow-ups — investigation results, compensation status, whether promises were kept — rarely get the same attention. Sometimes they

never get covered at all.

Is this purely an economics/attention problem? Newsrooms don't have bandwidth to assign reporters to slow-burning follow-ups? Or is it

more about audience demand — readers just don't click on "6-month update on that thing you forgot about"?

Curious how working journalists here think about this. Do you ever want to follow up on a story but your editor kills it because it's

"old news"? Is there a sustainable model for long-term accountability journalism beyond dedicated investigative desks?

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