The local paper is bunk

With a tip of the hat to Mr. Ford and his comment about history "Newspapers are bunk"

This Sunday morning I bought, as I usually do, a copy of the local bird cage liner. A paper called the Kansas City Star. Since we moved here I’ve grown accustomed to having each page of the paper be at least two thirds ads and what news that the paper sees fit to print are either one inch snippets of words that never give you any information because there is not enough space in one column inch or the obituary section that usually runs about three and a half pages. Today’s front page was taken up with a puff piece concerning the travails of a county coroner after a tornado struck his town. The piece rambled on for some four pages all the time avoiding the simple fact that the coroner was doing the job he hired on to do and doing it with compassion and competency. Certainly newsworthy, but maybe worth about eight column inches in the Metro Secion (which the Star no longer prints)

With Europe dissolving into economic anarchy and the euro fast disappearing as a viable instrument there was not one mention of that fact in the paper and nothing was said that the G-8 leaders were all in DC trying to persuade our government to bail them out just as we did our financial institutions a couple of years ago. And of course no one mentions how well that exercise turned out for the average American. Chaos is here, looking us in the eye and the local media doesn’t even see it!

The editorial section usually complains about pot holes and students without school provided breakfasts and other than the opinion pieces  never discusses national events. They do have the obligatory conservative writer but they normally assure that his thoughts do not conflict with the paper’s biases. And that’s what passes for new and information in this region.

In a refreshing change of news and information we last week  spent a few days in Washington DC and took the opportunity to read their paper of record because, to our satisfied surprise the Washington Post still contains news and information. Each day we could read several sections of the paper, and each section contained pages of news that informed us of events in the nation and around the world. It was so refreshing that we are considering ordering the paper for delivery by mail. Despite the Post’s political slant it does print actual news and we are starved for news while living in the information desert of Kansas City.

At least by getting a real newspaper I'll be able to read, learn about and comment on real events in the world we occupy rather than on the price wars the ads seem to focus on.