How About Conspiring to Bring Us News?

Recently, Wisconsin State Journal reporter George Hesselberg, or someone doing a good job of posing as him, left a comment at my blog. It went "Most days, to tell the truth, we [old media] couldn't conspire to start a wastebasket fire." To be honest, such admissions of incompetence don't exactly inspire much faith in my local news organizations within me. And there are days when I'd take it even further – some days they couldn't conspire to do any actual reporting. I mean, take a look at the #1 most important story that readers need to know about today:



To quote Palmer in The Thing as Norris' head sprouts legs and makes a dash, you gotta be fucking kidding.

Secretly cheering for Brent Favre in tonight's Packers vs Viqueens game is the big story? Why is this fluff not in, say, the sports section where it belongs? Ooh! And then there's the story about students in Verona doing yoga. How many years of journalism school and months of investigation did it take to write that one? And why is this story so incredibly important anyway?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been busting its balls exposing fraud in the Wisconsin Shares program. Why are the combined resources of the two papers here in Madison unable to do anything similar? I mean, the Capitol is their backyard.

Is there really nothing going on in state or local government that is more important than an opinion poll? Or are Brent Favre and the Packers just so fucking important that their every move must grace the front page?