Just the other day, more news that dark chocolate can help lower pressure (seems like old news, but okay). Here’s how the SF Chron presented the story:

Front page. Two columns. One of those columns is simply a (confusing) image of swirling chocolate, providing absolutely no information whatsoever. What the hell is the front page about, here? Advertisements, eye-candy imagery, very non-news stories.

Contrast the NYT treatment of the story:

Tucked away on page 11. No hype or imagery. The front page of the New York Times is still for news, apparently.

Although these are both products in the same category (newspaper), they are really not the same kind of thing at all. Their purpose, intent, motivation, audience differ vastly. I need to stop thinking of them as a set of like items, because that lulls me (as the user) into a misleading state of expectation.

I admit that I regularly check out Reuters weird news. Even the list of headlines tells us something.

I guess there’s some cultural titillation in the stream of stories that follow the template of “Oh those wacky Asians|Indians|Gays|Rednecks|Farmers|Poor Folk|etc. !” Of course, what we find funny about the other reveals something interesting about us in turn. That’s certainly one of the side effects of the Museum of Foreign Grocery Products, isn’t it?

The SF Chron devotes a fair amount of the front section and most of their Sunday Style section to stories and photo spreads about a new mall opening in San Francisco. Granted, it’s not the front page or anything, and we don’t expect hard news, but does it have to be such blatant content of commercial interest? It’s one thing when the local community papers write about small businesses, some quid pro quo for advertising dollars before, during, or after, but a big-city newspaper? Yuck.

Meanwhile, I only knew get ‘er done as the catch-phrase of Larry the Cable Guy, but I am noticing it now in stories about construction, like the above photo from the building of this new mall, or the re-opening of our local Devil’s Slide road. I guess it’s another example of cultural reverse engineering; presumably the working-class salt-of-the-earth lingo of construction works was where Larry picked up that particular phrase.

The reports (and slow-to-appear-details for those of us that read RSS headlines) of yesterday’s gunman-rampage in Montreal raised an interesting detail question: how do we consider the loss of life of the perpetrator of a crime?

When I read that some asshole goes charging into a school with a gun, I don’t care what happens to him (except that he is stopped). If he commits suicide or is killed by police, does he get included in the total of dead?

If a suicide bomber detonates an explosive belt in the middle of a crowded marketplace, do we count her as well?

Headlines tell us “XX dead in Baghdad suicide bomb” or “Shooting rampage leaves Y people dead.” Do you expect the total to include only victims?

I’m not suggesting what is right, only what we are conditioned to expect. Perhaps there are some journalistic standards for accuracy here. Perhaps they vary by region. The headlines from Montreal are emphasizing that two people are dead, but one of those is the shooter.

It’s not even a moral judgement of the value of life, but just a reaction to the story “Oh my God – what happened – how many people were killed?” that focuses strongly on the victims of the crime.

Just some thoughts on mulitiple perspectives buried within a story…

Newspaper Printing Kiosk

We saw this in Hong Kong. From this kiosk, you could download and print (reformatted) recent versions of many different newspapers from around the planet.

A big news story today deals with the Crawford, TX guy who fired a shotgun in the air, presumably in protest over the Sheehan gathering near both his and GWB’s place. I was surprised by the rhetoric used by the SF Chronicle to describe the incident (story not available online).

Larry Mattlage hopped into his pickup truck, barreled across his pasture and pulled up to the fence within a few hundred feet of the protests. He then climbed out of the cab, retrieved a a shotgun from the back and fired at least one blast into the air.

Don’t you just get the picture of some angry redneck, hopping and barreling so? Seems like some sloppy journalism; I guess having a point of view is a “good” thing, but it seems rather manipulative to me.

Gary Condit is back in the news today. Guess we’re approaching normalcy.