End of the World News
I grew up with Spotlight being my local news program, so I am used to 1 or 2 serious stories and then the rest of the 30 minutes being filled up with stories of giant pasty making in St Ives, a cat that has been up a tree for 3 weeks in Totnes, and how the presenter still hasn’t got all the beans out of his ears from the Children in Need special a month ago.
I then moved to Lancaster where they have North West Depressed on. Every day there would be vicious gangland killings, brutal spousal murders and of course 15 minutes of sport. London news was similar, so when I moved to Sacramento I expected a similar level of news.
How wrong I was. The news headlines this week have been as follows:
Monday – Birds. Near a Home Depot in Sacramento, hundreds of birds have been sighted, and the number is higher than usual. Why were there so many birds, is this a sign of imminent disaster?
Tuesday – Rain. It started to rain last night, so the news had 12 minutes of coverage of what that meant and the delays it had caused. Why so much rain, is this a sign of imminent disaster?
Even the national news has its quirks. You see they really are not that interested in what is going on anywhere else than in their own country, so to get international news is nigh on impossible. The same is true for the local newspaper here in Sacramento. We have the Sacramento Bee. Now my experience of local newspapers is the Evening Herald or even worse the Cornish Times (comes out once a week and gives unrivalled coverage of all the local jumble sales). The Bee though is more like the Evening Standard in London, only bigger and better. It comes out daily, and has around 6-7 sections each and every day. On Sundays it goes up to about 14 sections. The 1st section is always national and international news. There will be 14 pages of US news and just 2 of international, normally with a huge Hummer ad on one of those pages. Then the next section is just made up of State news. So there is a bigger focus on what is happening locally than on international or come to think of it, national events. In fact there are more pages devoted to cartoons than there is to international news. But then again, Calvin & Hobbes are very funny.
I then moved to Lancaster where they have North West Depressed on. Every day there would be vicious gangland killings, brutal spousal murders and of course 15 minutes of sport. London news was similar, so when I moved to Sacramento I expected a similar level of news.
How wrong I was. The news headlines this week have been as follows:
Monday – Birds. Near a Home Depot in Sacramento, hundreds of birds have been sighted, and the number is higher than usual. Why were there so many birds, is this a sign of imminent disaster?
Tuesday – Rain. It started to rain last night, so the news had 12 minutes of coverage of what that meant and the delays it had caused. Why so much rain, is this a sign of imminent disaster?
Even the national news has its quirks. You see they really are not that interested in what is going on anywhere else than in their own country, so to get international news is nigh on impossible. The same is true for the local newspaper here in Sacramento. We have the Sacramento Bee. Now my experience of local newspapers is the Evening Herald or even worse the Cornish Times (comes out once a week and gives unrivalled coverage of all the local jumble sales). The Bee though is more like the Evening Standard in London, only bigger and better. It comes out daily, and has around 6-7 sections each and every day. On Sundays it goes up to about 14 sections. The 1st section is always national and international news. There will be 14 pages of US news and just 2 of international, normally with a huge Hummer ad on one of those pages. Then the next section is just made up of State news. So there is a bigger focus on what is happening locally than on international or come to think of it, national events. In fact there are more pages devoted to cartoons than there is to international news. But then again, Calvin & Hobbes are very funny.
posted by Nick at 10:09 AM
1 Comments:
and I bet Gus Honeybun never reads your birthday out - did you ever have that?
Ian
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