Thursday, July 24, 2008

News? Does it still exist?

I saw the sun this morning. It was beautiful. Of course it was only out for about 90 seconds, but that was enough to give us some hope. It would appear that we’re in for a spell of seriously wet weather. WCSH weatherman Kevin Mannix said this morning that our area should expect about 30 hours of this rain. Since around suppertime last night when I was sure my electronic rain gauge was reset, we have recorded 1.16 inches of rain on my weather station.

Big Papi David Ortiz was able to thrill the Red Sox fans at the Portland Sea Dogs game last night by his presence. I wasn’t there, but the game was delayed several hours by weather. When it did begin the big guy’s thrill was restricted to the presence as he didn’t exactly contribute much before he left the game permanently. He is now in Boston to rejoin the Sox.

I think I’ve waited too long to tell those of you who might have read yesterday’s post about Wife Gator’s anxious time. To be fair, it was an anxious time for me, too. But she worked her full day yesterday and came home still full of P and V and even went out with our daughter for a Dine Around meal. She stayed away from heavily spiced food.

Just like it usually is when the weather is as humid as it is today, I had a rough time at my Senior Fitness session this morning. The primary culprit for my discomfort and difficulty was my hip. As I’ve mentioned, I have a steel plate in that thing and when the weather gets working on it, it severely restricts my activity due to the quickness of the walking pain. Don’t feel sorry for me. A couple years ago I was told I’d be in a wheelchair by now. I’m not, so that’s a good thing.

The news this morning is severely lacking items that interest me, at least new items. Most of the stuff I write about is also mostly a rehashing. The newspaper is reporting that the anti-tax people raised a lot more money than the health organizations. But that’s “news” from two or three days ago. Obama is making gaffs on his tour. But that’s not news. Collins has released her latest ad that plays to moderates. There’s nothing new there.

We seem to have entered a slow news time. But with the impending death of the local daily newspaper and the failure of any of the TV stations to find and report news, the slow time will continue. I remember when newspapers and TV stations hired real investigative reporters. They would dig deep into a story and kept people really informed of the happenings of government and business. Those days seem to be gone.

It would have been virtually impossible to tell the political persuasion of reporters. Sure, the news outlets would present their opinions on clearly marked editorial or opinion pages, but today we get the side of a story according to the beliefs of the reporter alone. And most of the “original” stories we read are nothing more than publicity handouts.

It will be nice if local news organizations ever do real reporting again. But then even that name “local news organization” is rather misleading. None of the major ones, neither the daily newspaper nor the three major TV stations are owned by local folks. The days of my memory are from a time when they all were real “local news organizations.”

Stay dry and enjoy your day.

GiM

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