On Mondays, morning newspapers are pretty useless, for a number of reasons:
- First, nothing happens on Sundays in this country. (Thank goodness for Sunday elections in foreign countries, which occasionally give us something to report on Mondays.) Therefore it’s nothing but canned copy for the most part, written well in advance.
- Worse, it’s the dregs of the canned copy. The best of it is used on Sunday. Why? Because Sunday is the best-read paper of the week (for reasons that have always sort of eluded me, since the last thing I want to do on Sunday is read a newspaper), and Mondays are easily the worst-read. You might think, “If you’d put better copy on Mondays, maybe you’d get more readership,” and occasionally newspapers make a half-hearted stab at that, but in the end they just hate to waste their best effort on a little-read paper.
- Finally, there’s the fact that the people working at a newspaper on Sunday (the day the Monday paper is put together) are pretty much the B team. If you’re going to put top people on the weekend rotation, you’ll have them work Tuesday-Saturday, not the dreaded Sunday-through-Thursday, because you want your best on deck on Fridays and Saturdays, the key days for producing the Sunday paper. The Sunday shift people tend to phone it in.
Got that? OK, so here’s your Monday report, which I’m doing more as an afternoon paper, again:
- Iraqi Voters Defy Violence, Throng Polls –Unfortunately, there’s little new to tell you beyond what was reported in morning editions, since the results won’t be available for days. But you might want to see what NPR had — Iraq’s Political Parties Vie For Position After Vote — since it did at least try to look ahead.
- DHEC loosens arsenic limit for SCE&G — This is about water quality on the Wateree River. Your DHEC watchdogs at work. (A couple of years back, DHEC shocked us all by actually putting its foot down for once and saying “no” to Lexington Medical’s request for a duplicative open-heart surgery certificate of need. This shocked LexMed, and everyone else, including us editorial board types, who were used to DHEC being spineless. I proposed a headline for an editorial on the subject, “What DHEC is this?,” but my colleagues talked me down. The nice thing (and possibly also the main drawback) to a blog is that there’s no one to talk you down.
- Let me show you my gun — Last week, the WSJ had a front-page story about the phenomenon of gun-lovers exposing their favorite appendages in public, apparently just to make other people uncomfortable as all get-out. (You have to wonder just how disturbed a person has to be to want to do that, huh?) Today, the NYT is playing catchup with a similar story on its main Web page. Most disturbingly, these little displays are taking place at Starbucks, among other places. Last thing I need when I’m trying to relax with a coffee is gun-nuts and counterprotesters strutting around hollering at each other…
- Iran Says It Has New Line of Cruise Missiles — Just to let you know that there are more menacing things in the world that rednecks walking around with pistols on their hips.
- “Hurt Locker” wins best picture — No, the Oscars are not important, but they did happen Sunday, and a lot of people are interested.
- American traitor captured in Pakistan? — Murky story at this point, but interesting. About the possible capture of an American-born spokesman for al Qaeda.
That’s it for today. Whew, that was some work coming up with 6 items (and it wouldn’t be a self-respecting front page with fewer).
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I guess coffee and gun nuts is slightly better than alcohol and gun nuts.
You’ll do anything to put in a plug for Starbucks, won’t you? I guess they just aren’t that into you….
Just what we need. More arsenic.
It’s a great strategy–just define away your environmental problems–saves so much aggravation and expense–at least for a while…