More Excellence in Journalism

And more facetiousness in my blog titles.

I think as the days go on, journalists and their respective organizations are less interested in the war, politics, and life and world-changing events and are more interested in bringing us the "down home cookin'" version of the news that borders on bourgeois entertainment. News that would get usually categoried under "News of the Weird' or perhaps used as one of the mandatory alphabetized U.S. state goings-on paragraphs in the USA Today is now in larger font than headlines informing us where our troops are. Whatever happened to boring, saltine, doesn't-affect-me-because-it's-not-on-this-continent news? 

Previously, when I wanted to be entertained by the news, I watched the Daily Show. Now, I don't even have to stay up late anymore. My CNN homepage works just as well. I think the newest shift in journalism is pointing out irony and seeing if we can guess it.

This week:

A guy opens fire in an Amish one-room schoolhouse and kills some girls execution-style. Helpfully, the writer paints us the miserable picture of the scene, because none of us could be there:

"Video of the scene showed Amish young men wearing hats and suspenders and women and girls in long dresses sitting outside the small country schoolhouse, surrounded by dirt roads."

Hey, thanks. That is completely the opposite of what I pictured, and that really helps me to bear the burden of sympathy. Whatever happened to the Who, What, Where, When, and How of news reporting? It seems as though the competitive nature of newswriting is the eqivalent of going through your neighbors garbage: to seek the most disturbing details pertinent to the story without seeming directly intrusive. The "reality TV" element is also present, as an unbiased recount of events is a thing of the past. Clever editing now paints us stories of the various characters involved in the daily plots, because as Americans, we are probably unable to decide for ourselves.

Take in the aforementioned story, the Amish. They wear hats and bonnets and sit around mourning in dirt roads. Hey, they don't seem bad, right? They're victims here (no mention of profits made by handmade furniture and/or cheeses).

The gunman, however, is the Nation's newest sick love interest. I went to the grocery store yesterday and two of the clerks were chatting over their registers about this story. They traded newsbits like schoolyard gossip.

"Well I heard he killed them all execution-style..." The girl said, and raised her eyebrows.
"Yeah, and I heard he was like, tooootally mentally crazy and had been in an institution or something."

Was it true? Who cares. It's something to talk about, right?

Today, instead of leaving the news story to local media to attend to, the nation's nose is still in Paradise, Pennyslvania's shit. Through today's quality reporting, I've learned several new twists to the story (and the gunman's character). Hopefully you were watching from the beginning, because if not some of this just won't make as much sense. 

Please file the following under "not necessary":

-Gunman "dreamed of molesting". Um, well. He's dead now, so I am not so sure how this is related to the story other than to upset family members.

-KY Jelly found in classroom.. Seriously. See above. Consider the following quote, "It's very possible, when he talks about doing the things and having dreams for the last two years about doing things that he did 20 years ago ... he perhaps planned, with the kind of wood and eyebolts and flex cuffs and KY Jelly and other things, it's very possible that he intended to victimize these children in many ways prior to executing them and killing himself," Miller said." Is this intended to make us thankful that it wasn't worse? Newsworthiness vs. appropriateness. Work on that.

-Quotes from his wife. Not necessary, especially this one: "The man that did this today was not the Charlie I've been married to for almost 10 years. My husband was loving, supportive, thoughtful. All the things you'd always want and more. He was an exceptional father," the statement said." Sorry, but.... I'm going to have to call "bullshit".

Next: How the Mark Foley story is being handled, including awesome inside jokes you can use based on the IM chat transcripts.