Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Recycle Cans, Not News

Sun publishers are occasionally guilty of recycling what passes for news in these parts – typically the newsprint equivalent of index cards thumbtacked to a laundromat’s bulletin board and going by the euphemism “community briefs.” But, not content to limit please-attend-time-date-and-place items to the calendar page, our news jockeys are whipping old horses to trot one more lap. Editors now promise cow-country readers a feature that’s typeset to look like news, but isn’t: “Five good things about DeSoto County.” Here’s a summary of the starting gate lineup, with recycling notes.

-- The high school football team won a game Saturday. Readers enjoyed advances, pictures, and daily stories and scores starting last Friday and continuing throughout the weekend and again today.
-- The high school kids held a pep parade and homecoming dance: advances, stories and photo packages began showing up Thursday and Friday and have continued daily throughout the weekend, most of this week, and again today.
-- Habitat for Humanity will hold a local groundbreaking: This story has run every day this week – so far.
-- Health Department will hold a “drive-thru” flu-shot clinic: announced Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday after its first announcement in last week’s county commission roundup. Oh, and it’s in the community calendar again today.

And it’s not just editors who toil in anonymity that ride old nags. An editor in a face-over-her-byline column (“The Week in Preview,” for gawd's sake) assembles half a dozen twice-and-thrice-announced events, including one by a children’s-pageant profiteer, a party in the park (which has a full story four inches right on the same page), and a radio-station’s self-promotion disguised as a cancer fundraiser.

I love recycling – when it’s bottles and cans.

Don't click to read more; you'll get this page recycled.

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