Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Journamalism Trick or Treat!

I have never, ever liked the newspaper of the town I grew up in, which happens to be the only daily statewide newspaper in the state I grew up in.  Partisan to a fault.  Emphasis on fault.

After a two day hiatus of not having access to my provider...  again...  I was anxious to see what damage the hurricane did to the part of the country I grew up in, and got a comprehensive overview via msnbc, which went a bit beyond your 'intrepid journamilists standing outside in dangerous weather segments' which would lead one to believe it might be actually sensible to have people outdoors during catastrophic weather looking like they were in eminent danger of losing life and limb for the edification of the viewers. 

Mercifully, there weren't as many of them this time around as I remembered, as being an election year, it was all about how the candidates were showing their true colors in a time of crisis. 

Obama was being truly presidential, and Romney was packing up canned goods which weren't wanted by the Red Cross, as they were asking for money donations. 

Now if anyone were up to raising huuuuge sums of money, one would think it would be the latter, but he seemed to be more interested in shipping baked beans to Massachusetts...  or something of the sort.

Much was made of the governor of New Jersey who praised the president, just a week after maintaining he was so blind he was groping along without knowing where he was...  only to find that the president was actually on top of things and the governor was stupified and grateful that said president actually was of immense help.  Whaddaya know.

There were helpful maps on the tee-vee showing where power was out throughout the northeast, and to my consternation, one of the yellow dots was for the city I grew up in, and huge yellow areas for the one where my dearest relatives live. 

Disconcerting.  As my father, the Venerable, had moved to a riverfront apartment last year  to a house that had an elevator to celebrate his 97th birthday, his only acknowledgement to the fact that his knees weren't taking kindly to stairs, I was irked that the tee-vee hadn't provided blue dots to show where all the flooding was, and was somewhat worried as to whether the Merrimack hadn't decided to do a once-in-a-century rebellion and overflow it's banks and make a dash uphill to conquer Elm Street, which is the main street in that venerable city. 

Have had glimpses of its' mills over the past months every time John Sununu decides to spout racist theories in statements to the national press and seems to love standing where he has the defunct factories in the background.  And a more desolate picture I can't imagine.... having grown up in the middle of all that brick and mortar.  But to each his own.

So, as comprehensive as the reporting was, I had questions, and knew that the only recourse to finding out more about conditions locally was to call up the local rag on the internet to find out more about what was going on.

I used to sell that crap out on the street as a mere child of ten.  For all the bunk about having been a paper boy and risen to great heights later in life some kazillionaires love to relate as having been formative in their youth, can only say it was a miserable way to get a few cents and hardly educational, more 'edumacational', as you learned fast about people and their spleen.

It had undue influence nationwide for a time in the 70's, having covered up and more or less helped out in the 'dirty tricks' dept. of the Nixon campaign, and was a bastion of Rethug thinking.  And branded all the students at the state university as commie pinko fags.  In my case, they only got the last one right.

I almost never go to see what garbage they are spouting, unless there is something very specific I wish to learn.

Much to my surprise, today's header was 'Trick or Treating is On'.

From which I can assume that Da Ven is sitting high and toasty dry in his riverfront appartment, and all is well in 'da kingdom'. 

I gleaned very little news about what was happening in the rest of the state, esp. the coastal area, and one would believe that that five mile stretch of beachfront was thriving.  Or something, which the msnbc maps belied. 

To say it was less than informative would be understating the obvious.

Happy Hallo-veeen! 

Humbug.  Journamalism can be very irksome.
 

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