I’m thinking about a traditional newspaper that has various sections, or a newscast that has different segments. Are there any areas of such media that you really wonder why anyone is interested in them?
I’m regularly confounded by the amount of food reportage. Reviews of restaurants, food festivals, home cooking/ingredients… I will admit that I’m pretty much at an extreme, viewing food and drink primarily as fuel, and eating out as unnecessary expense and hassle. But my weekly paper regularly has entire sections dedicated to these subjects.
And sports. :rolleyes:
Yeah - I know. Different people are interested in different things. I’m just surprised that these 2 areas - in which I personally have negligible interest - are something like 20% of the paper’s coverage. I’m not asking you to agree with me - just asking if you feel the same about any other aspects of news media.
The “returning soldier suprises his children” segment. Okay, it might be an interesting emotional moment once or twice, but by the 500th version they show, it is getting kind of stale.
Absolutely anything having to do with fashion in general-interest news. The people who care aren’t getting their info from you, and the people who are getting their info from you don’t care.
Time magazine has a regular section on Broadway. Time is supposed to be aimed at an international audience. Why report on something that is only relevant to people in New York City? Especially when even most of the people in NYC don’t go to Broadway shows.
I really wonder about wedding announcements - there can’t be many people who don’t already know about the wedding, but do notice the announcement in the paper and care about it.
Obituaries for a start. I didn’t know them when they were alive, why should i care now?
Horoscopes. Do they still have those?
Want ads. I know they serve a purpose, but I can’t say I’ve ever read them. If anybody ever posted a “personals” directed to me, I missed it. Sorry.
Sports other than the one I care about. What?
To be fair, I always loved the political opinion page and the letters to the editor. A good whack job letter always brightened my week. Now, thanks to the internet, I am far too aware of the number of wack jobs out there. I liked it better when I could pretend there were only a few.
I don’t understand the newsworthiness of fires. It’s certainly a major disaster if it’s your house (in which case you won’t need the news to learn about it) but how does it affect the community in general? I feel fires get reported just because they make for good pictures.
Weather? Somebody reports on the weather in your area?
Here they just are all excited about the moon. There was a Black Moon last night, happens only once in a Blue Moon. And we have Strawberry Moons, Harvest Moons, Wolf moons, Snow, Worm, Pink, Hunter’s, etc. I have only seen the one moon, but apparently there a bunch of them. And the weather people just love talking about something that the probably never actually see.
Back when I read newspapers, I was perplexed by the “Rich People Amuse Themselves” section. I could never understand the fawning and gushing because Mrs. Huntington Buffington Vanderbilt had a ten-thousand dollar party in her mansion – and raised 200 bucks to buy lingerie* for homeless women. I’ve been on this rock a long time, and never met a single person who gives a shit about rich people’s parties. Why is an entire section of newspapers dedicated to this?
*Rich people always need some horseshit reason to have a party. This puzzles me too.
On the TV news, I often wonder how they come up with their story mix. I mean, one night it’ll be something interesting- our local NBC affiliate broke a huge public corruption scandal through a bunch of well done journalism that all started with an investigation into why the local school bus authority’s drivers were driving like maniacs and getting students to schools super-late. Basically they dug in and kept finding out more and more interesting stuff.
But then other times we get the most absurd nonsense from the same station about how some old geezer in a nearby small town paints amateurish murals to support veterans or something like that. Fine sentiment, but lame material. Or some variant on “governmental body plans something years in advance, homeowners/land owners don’t do due diligence 15 years later, and are upset when actual implementation begins on long-planned project” That seems to be a common refrain around here- “They’re actually building that highway they put on the plans in 1990? Better pitch a shit-fit because I bought a house 500 yards from where the highway will be built, because it can’t possibly be MY fault.”
At least our weather guys are both good and fired up about atmospheric/astronomical phenomena. They’ve had additional segments lately detailing the relationship between temperature, dew point and humidity as well as how adiabatic heating in high pressure systems adds to the local temperature. And they always describe any interesting astronomical phenomena- blue moons, meteor showers, solar eclipses, that asteroid that zipped by last week, etc…
For some reason, channel 8 news at 11am leads with weather and maybe some interesting stuff, then devotes about 5 minutes talking about The Fucking Bachelor or whatever that crap is on TV at night. I mean what the fuck??? That is not news. And then at the end of the hour, they foist Mr. Food’s Test Kitchen. Geez, that guy is annoying! Mute, Mute, Mute!
Public display of grief. Showing the kid whose best friend was shot, or the mother of the kid who was shot, especially by the cops. Whose idea is it to display these people’s pain to the public?
Why is it that every news story has to be reported on by someone live at the scene? And why is every news story “breaking news”? And when did news anchors stop acting professionally? I swear the local news teams here spend half the broadcast making idle chit-chat, cracking jokes, etc. Argh! Just read the news like you’re supposed to!
Yeah. Come back in a few years after the soldier and their spouse have split up, and the non-military spouse has sole custody and the soldier doesn’t even have supervised visitation rights because the kids are not safe around them.
That was deliberately gender-neutral.
I also really hate the amount of time news crews devote to that organization that packages rice and dehydrated vegetables for war zones. Face it - most of it will be diverted to the warlords, if it’s consumed by people at all.
