These days of high-tech news delivery -- grandmothers with blackberry units and cell-phones, bluetooth headsets connecting us to the worldwide network of information, and tying us into everything from stock prices to what color underwear a teacher is wearing on a particular day, seems to be of varied, and disputable, efficacy.
However, I happened upon ESPN's homepage (www.espn.com), a daily activity for me, and was shocked -- sort of -- that there were two news items that were actually newsworthy, so to speak. The first story was that Ricky Williams, the running back who retired from the Miami Dolphins and the NFL a month before the season began rather than stop smoking marijuana, was no longer pursuing a return to the NFL; and the second story was that Jason Giambi, the New York Yankee first baseman, had admitted -- not merely been suspected of -- taking steroids.
Now despite the fact that we are in an insular, cushy world of Starbucks, juice boxes and cell phones, we are in war-time these days, folks...so the fact that these two items are newsworthy is simultaneously disheartening and disquieting. The dubious value of these two stories aside, they are both newsworthy -- and yet they're both meaningless dribble that, in five years, will be meaningless. So I took a look back at the news over the past week and, for the most part, the main stories involve Tom Brokaw leaving NBC's nightly news telecast and Dan Rather announcing his imminent departure from the requisite position for CBS. So the newsmakers themselves are news, too. Like anyone gives a shit about that Canuck, Peter Jennings.
The other news that was legitimately sad and unfortunate was the plane crash that claimed the life of Dick Ebersol's 14-year-old son. The word sad -- or tragic, unfortunate, or awful, or horrible -- is definitely appropriate here...but what is not is that this seems to be at the top of the list.
Does anyone herein know that the Ukraine held elections that were so rife with corruption and collusion that they had to be declared null and void? Does anyone care?
Ah...we also know Scott Peterson was defended in part by his father for going to choir practice when he was a child. That's not news, however...a lot of choir singers would commit murders more, most likely, if they weren't always so damn busy rehearsing ;-) Okay, so even that might seem a bit heavy-handed -- maybe they're just spending a lot of their time at band camp experimenting with flutes...
In general terms, I wanted to lament the dearth of real news and in specific terms, I wanted to explore the fact that news isn't news anymore. Something short of a catastrophic incident -- on the scale of 9/11 -- can easily (and be worthy of) front-page coverage. But it seems that technology has outpaced our ability to entertain and stimulate ourselves. Or at least, of course, until the next Spongebob movie is released.
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