Too Much News, They Say

Peggy Bellows, managing editor of the T-D -- the one who didn't work her way up the ranks in Richmond but just arrived from elsewhere -- addresses the very issue I wrote about recently -- why is the T-D getting their ass beat on breaking news. Her offered excuse in Sunday's Commentary section is "With So Much News, No One Gets it All."

If this was a job interview and she was asked that infamous job interview question, "describe a challenging situation and how you handled it," and her answer was "no one gets it all," would she have gotten the job? I know that answer wouldn't have worked for me. Is the answer to prioritize? "We have a team of four full-time reporters and an editor who cover Richmond, but there is so much going on and so many good, important stories to pursue, no one gets it all." That's some fine how-dee-do explanation from the newspaper of record.

Well then, you pull off reporters from the hundreds of stories we don't read, we don't care about, that are of so little interest that all the "special interest weekly publications, television stations, bloggers and radio stations" aren't covering them either, and put them on the trail that everyone else is running down. What happened to the good old days -- maybe it was just in the movies -- when a managing editor who is getting his/her lunch handed to him/her by competitors explodes with anger in the newsroom? Would J. Jonah Jameson put up with this? Would Jameson have sniffled, "It's a small erosion of our goal of owning breaking news..."?

And Bellows' readers weren't even noticing the same lapses I wrote about. They were complaining about the Robert Bobb on the Boulevard story and the cell phone parking lot at the airport. (What is a cell phone parking lot?)

Meanwhile, my sources tell me (and they're no more reliable than anyone else's) that the only baseball coming to the Boulevard is VCU baseball. VCU will end up with The Diamond. (And I can't say that's a bad thing because everything they touch seems to look a whole lot better than before, just don't say that around anyone from Oregon Hill...which incidentally, also looks a whole lot better. Nice job of making the new houses blend in with the look of the old houses.)

Meanwhile, the Business section once again wins as the one section I don't immediately toss in the recycling. Here's the news I can use. Am I a compulsive debtor? Do I need Iris Taylor's advice this week? Maybe not. My massive credit card debt is not all from ordering things on QVC because I'm lonely, the operators are my friends, and being on the air to praise a product validates my life. My debt is from keeping up with the new electronic technology when I still make the old hippies living in communes salary. I think the only cure for that is get a second job.

Ah, but here's a good story. The AP explains the converter box I'm going to need for my TV that still uses rabbit ears. And it recommends the Digital Stream DTX9900 sold by RadioShack. Thank you! Hours of head scratching eliminated.

Oh, and look at this little story buried on the bottom of D3. "SEC sues Marc Gabelli, alleging fraud." I am an evil Italian, so the name of the evil Italian who keeps trying to take over Media General resonates like the name Voldemort. The dark mark on my forearm burns! They had to make sure this story was in the paper, that Marc Gabelli, the son of Lord Voldemort (aka Mario Gabelli), is being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly committing securities fraud. Something about hedge funds and mutual funds I don't understand. (See old hippies living in communes salary.)

Postscript: So I went to Radio Shack and got the Digital Stream DTX9900 with the $40 coupon provided by my government. I still had to pay $20 in addition, but this thing rocks the rabbit ears! We had to put the bowtie in the window and reposition the ears a little to pull in the weaker signals, but now instead of five very snowy channels, I get 11 channels, all very clear. Apparently all the local channels except channel 8 have second and some even third tiers that show weather or more programming. Wow! Don't wait to get your converter. Do it now!