Big news

(c) 2010 by Steve Martaindale

 A wonderful thing about the Internet is the ease of checking out what’s of interest in other parts of the country and the world.

Tuesday morning, when casting about the usual places for a column idea proved fruitless, I decided to broaden my search and turned to The Washington Post. What caught my eye was a line across the page that was intended to catch my eye, labeled “Hot Topics.”

These, one is left to assume, are what the Post thinks the largest number of its online readers are interested in ... and it’s probably correct.

Reading from the left are links to “Conan O’Brien,” “DWTS,” “Indonesian volcano,” “Wheel of Fortune,” “Keith Olbermann,” “Wade Phillips,” “Westboro Church” and “Carolyn Hax.”

Let’s see, Conan is a television entertainer whose new show opened Monday; “Dancing With the Stars” is yet another of the so-called reality television shows of which I’ve lost track; a contestant on the “Wheel” game show solved a long puzzle with only one or two letters; Olbermann is slapped on the wrist for violating his television network’s policies by contributing to political campaigns; and the Dallas Cowboys football team fired Phillips as its head coach.

If you’re keeping count with me, that’s five of the eight hot topics are entertainment-related. A newsy link concerns the mounting death toll in an Asian volcano and another tells about counter protesters out-manning funeral protesters we discussed here a few weeks ago.

And what is Hax? Oh, she’s style columnist in the Arts & Living section of the paper. The link connected to her current column, “The unromantic proposal and what it may (or may not) portend.”

Are these really the hot topics in our lives? Maybe it’s just inside the Beltway. Let’s try the Chicago Tribune.

A similar line of top stories include: “Mayoral race,” “Obama’s Asia trip,” “Bush memoir,” “Keith Olbermann,” “Bulls win,” “Bears updates,” “Elizabeth Smart,” “Conan O’Brien” and “Mugs.”

I suspect the mayoral race might be a full-time story in Chicago, but you’ll recognize two entertainment headlines repeated from D.C. I guess George W. Bush promoting his book is entertainment, too. Bulls and Bears are local sports stories, not a Wall Street reflective.

Obama’s trip and Elizabeth Smart are live news stories, but what is “Mugs”?

You’re correct if you guessed it is “a collection of Chicago area arrest photos.” It includes the ineffective notation, “Arrest does not imply guilt, and criminal charges are merely accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty and convicted.”

It apparently has 200 police mug shots, led off by a woman charged with murder and with bandages on a cut across her neck. That’s hard news, right?

Checking out west with the San Francisco Chronicle, things actually get worse.

The links don’t really tell much, so here are brief descriptions of the pages SFGate.com says to “don’t miss.”

There is a blog neither written nor edited by staff members about the expansion of an “adult store” into a downtown location; a weekly culture blog featuring a vendor of cheesecake – the edible kind; a call to celebrate National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week; an article about long ago being duped by mail order record clubs; and, finally, a really interesting article about Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ new autobiography, “Life.”

What does all this mean, you ask?

Don’t ask me. I long ago gave up trying to figure out what people want to read and what they need to read

Yes, that applies here, also.

I’ve said it before, I’ll write what I think is an insightful piece on a current event and receive no feedback. Then I’ll throw together something silly or trivial, like this column, and will get e-mail about how great it was.

When my dad had a grocery store 40 years ago, he often commented, “If I could predict what people wanted, I’d be rich.”

You can take that to the bank.
(c) 2010 by Steve Martaindale