But when the same thing happens in NYC we have screaming headlines about how terrible the air quality is.
California has wildfires literally every year but they still make the news when they’re particularly damaging and record breaking. Fires have never impacted NYC to this extent in living memory - it’s deeply unusual for the region and inherently newsworthy.
Montana has a million people and NYC has almost 9 million people.
There are 4 NYC neighborhoods with over 200,000 people [1].
So we can say Montana makes up five NYC neighborhoods (out of 55 neighborhoods total).
Close enough!
[1] https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/cancer/registry/appendi...
<https://www.axiapr.com/blog/elements-of-news>
NYC is the largest city and metro region in the US, and quite arguably one of the two most prominent cities in the world (with London, per GaWC: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities...>).
It's also the media centre of the United States (and, again, arguably the world).
The Mid-Atlantic states (NY NJ PA DE MD DC VA WV) is home to 60 million people. Events there affect 20% of the population of the United States.
Montana is a beautiful state. But just 1.1 million people live there. The largest city, Billings, ranks 243 in the US (between Lakeland, FL, and Ann Arbor, MI and just ahead of Fairfield and Berkeley in California).
The smallest borough of New York City is Staten Island with a population of 495,747, or nearly 5 times that of Billings, MT. The total population of the City of New York is 8.8 million, and of the New York Metropolitan Statistical Area is 20.1 million. That's more the entire states of Wyoming, Alaska, North & South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah combined (19.6 million).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...>
There are billions of people worldwide who are directly connected to New York City and New York State through personal links and association.
New York also dominates both state and city mentions in Hacker News stories reaching the front page, though much of that is by mentions of the New York Times. (I've been doing analysis of HN front page story characteristics.)
I live in Washington State, and I refer to that time of year as "headache season."