When it comes to news, that’s the way it is

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, weeks passed before the whole country heard the news. The major cities got word first. Those living in small towns and villages didn’t hear about it until long after the funeral was over and Abe was pushing up daisies.

To my way of thinking, that was the last time the “news cycle” matched humanity’s capacity to comfortably ingest information.

When I was a wee lad, in the long, long ago, newspapers were still the main source of accurate information for Americans. Television networks aired the “nightly news” – 30-minute overviews of the day’s top stories.

Then, like now, TV news painted only with the broadest of brushes; folks got the details the following day, when the newspapers hit the stands. Back then, both television and print media employed lots of people: reporters, photographers, editors, fact checkers galore, proofreaders, etc. They did this because they wanted to offer the public a superior product. Even more importantly, they wanted to get the facts right.

The public demanded it. Americans were discerning and even ruthless when it came to getting their facts. Any news outlet that “got it wrong” could count on in-baskets full of excoriating comments and an immediate loss of readership and/or viewers.

Hence, most news outlets had integrity. Yes, even the TV people. When America sat down to the Huntley-Brinkley Report they could darn well count on Chet and David to deliver The Facts. Over at CBS, Walter Cronkite’s stern, fatherly gaze spoke volumes about his commitment to journalistic excellence.

This was news you could trust. And when the Detroit Free Press, New York Times and the smaller town papers like the one you’re reading now came out the next day, readers could count on getting all the details the networks hadn’t had time to cover. The small town papers also included news on which city councilman had done something ridiculous, how many people had shown up for the Memorial Day Parade and a couple photos of the Lion’s Club chicken barbecue.

It was an elegant system. All the news you really needed was right there on your porch when you arrived home from work.

Then came the Internet. The Internet promised us limitless information. Virtually every fact known to humankind was suddenly available at the flick of a Google. Naturally, most folks used this miracle of modern technology to find web sites they wouldn’t want their mothers to know about.

But once they’d grown tired of that, they started looking for news. As a species, we like news. We like to know what’s going on. We’re nosy. And the news outlets – to compete in this brave new world – were forced to provide that news 24/7. So was born the 24/7 news cycle.

The problem is, news doesn’t happen 24/7. Not real news. Not news that matters.

Watch CNN sometime if you think I’m wrong here; after a few hours you’ll have seen the same four stories regurgitated endlessly, with tiny new “factoids” inserted scattershot as they become available. If no factoids surface, the anchors and reporters resort to interviewing each other, just to keep the blah blah blah rolling along, to keep viewers’ eyes glued to the screen.

Large newspapers – which are these days hurtin’ for certain when it comes to finances – try to compete by providing online versions of their publications. Problem is, they really are hanging on by a thread, so they’ve done what all big corporations do when things get tough: cut the salaries of top management and hire more and better reporters.

Nah, I’m kidding; they fire all their experienced writers, reporters and photographers and then hire stringers to do the job for half the money. The fact they’re only getting one-third the quality doesn’t seem to bother management at all. (If you live in a big city, compare your town’s paper with one from 20, or even 10 years ago; you’ll see what I mean. And yes, I’m talking to you, Grand Rapids.)

As to getting the facts straight? P’shaw! Nobody expects that any more, do they?

And it’s only getting worse.

The Associated Press – one of the most respected names in news gathering – now uses (and I’m not making this up) robots to write thousands of its stories each year. Yes. Robots. (I assume it’s actually more like some sort of computer writing program, but the robots thing sounds more ominous.)

These robots churn out copy that reads like this (actual excerpt with grammatical and spelling errors intact): “Apple claimed ‘most personal device yet’ is non other than Apple Watch. iWatch has a processor equivalent to 4S; graphic, connectivity & UI is just awesome.”

You don’t have to be an English major to know that article was written by either a machine or a roomful of chimps. But so what? The important thing is, it’s NEWS!! And if you click on it, you’ll be treated to a bunch of popup ads and the media outlet makes one-sixteenth of a penny.

Everybody’s happy. The corporate giant makes money, the advertisers get their products in front of your eyes, and you … well, you get the feeling you’re actually “catching up” on the news. Except you don’t get that feeling, do you? I know I don’t.

I get the feeling I’m being lead around by the nose, desperately trying to locate a story that really matters amongst a steaming pile of computer-generated literary refuse. It gets harder every day.

For all I know, the story on the Lincoln assassination is out there in the ether someplace. Given time, maybe I’ll be able to wade through enough click-bait and popups to locate it.

I’m dying to find out who shot Abe.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 745-9530

This column brought to you by Dimitri Papageorgiou

My fiancée, light of my life, and reason for getting up each morning, Lori Frankforter, has a ridiculous name. My own name, while not ridiculous, is boring. Boring even by the standards of American males born in the ‘50s.

Mike Taylor. Not as boring as the names of my brothers, Bob and Bill, but still, Snoozeville, USA.

When it came to handing out names, my parents were concerned with an economy of letters, rather than creativity or panache.

I’ve whined about the dullness of my name before, but it turns out I may, at long last, be in a position to do something about it. On Sept. 11 (I know, it wasn’t our first choice of dates, either; sometimes you just have to roll with the punches) I’m getting married. And when you get married, you can change your name.

It’s legal and it’s not even that hard, or so I’ve been lead to believe by the first and only website dealing with the subject I visited. I’m sure there’s the usual government paperwork to fill out and probably a fee or two – can’t blow your nose without giving the Feds their 10-percent – but it’s do-able.

So now the question is, what name do we want? Tradition has Lori taking my last name, so she’d be Lori Taylor and we’d both be boring as all get-out. A lot of guys would be dead set on this one, since it (supposedly) establishes male dominance in the relationship. I’ve been married often enough to know there’s no such thing as “male dominance,” not if you want to sleep soundly at night and wake up without a salad fork sticking out of your ribs.

Also, “Taylor” is my adopted name and I’ve never been that attached to it. My actual surname remains a mystery, though I’m hoping it’s “Onassis” or “Gates” and that the error will be detected and my inheritance check mailed any day now. At any rate, keeping my own last name is no biggie for me.

I’d be happy to take Lori’s name. Mike Frankforter has a nice ring to it. It’s ridiculous, but I’ve always felt ridiculous is better than boring. Lori won’t have it, though; she’s always hated her last name and is in a big hurry to unload it at the wedding. (If you had heard as many “hot dog” and “wiener” jokes as has my beloved, you’d hate the name, too.)

Another option – one that’s gaining in popularity, according to the Internet – is to somehow combine our two last names. “Tayforter” or “Frankentaylor” were both possibilities we considered. For about two seconds. Turns out any combination we came up with was even more ridiculous and/or boring than the originals.

Likewise, we decided against the hyphenated thing. “Taylor-Frankforter” is both boring and ridiculous. And besides, the whole point of the exercise is to lose our boring and ridiculous names altogether.

That leaves the option of picking a shiny, brand new last name, one we both love. I, as always, voted for “Papageorgiou,” since there’s considerable evidence my biological father was Greek. (I’m basing this assumption on my abundance of back hair.) If we went with Papageorgiou I’d also change my first name to Dimitri, since “Dimitri Papageorgiou” just kicks butt, in my opinion.

Lori has other thoughts. She’s not sure what she wants, but she knows what she doesn’t, and Papageorgiou tops that list. Likewise, my second and third choices – Papalexopoulo and Moe – also got the thumbs down.

We considered hippy names like “Sunshine” or “Moonbeam” but decided too much time has passed since the days of black lights and Donovan LPs.

I’d be happy with a Hollywood action-star name like “Max Steele” or “Vance Riprock.” But again, Lori won’t listen to reason.

We have only a few weeks until the wedding and despite several lengthy discussions on the matter we’re no closer to a decision.

How are we supposed to get married when we don’t even know each other’s names?

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 745-9530

A mini-fridge could save our marriage

All I want is to be able to make a sandwich. A little ham, a little cheese. My needs are simple. My tastes are simple. Some would say I myself am simple. My ex-wives would say this, for sure, but they’re predisposed to make disparaging comments whenever my name is mentioned, so you can’t believe everything they say.

When I was still living on my own, making a sandwich was easy. I opened the refrigerator, pulled out the plastic tub containing all my sandwich-making stuff, tossed out anything which had begun to acquire a patina of green fuzz and used what remained to make the sandwich.

There was plenty of room for the “sandwich tub,” because aside from some beers and a container of the finest red wine to ever come in a box the rest of the fridge was empty.

Sitting there in my lonely bachelor kitchen eating my sandwich, I would sometimes reminisce about the halcyon days of marriages past, when my refrigerator was full of food that could be served without first being placed between two slices of bread. 

Women like to have food in the refrigerator; married women, anyway. They buy things like milk, eggs, pickles and other, even more extravagant non-necessities.

The love of my life and the woman who will become my wife in less than a month unless she wises up really soon, Lori Frankfurter, is direly stricken with this feminine food buying obsession. At any given moment, we have enough food in the refrigerator to feed the neighborhood for at least ten years following a nuclear apocalypse. 

She uses all this food to prepare things called “meals.” For you guys who have never been married, meals are collections of edible items consisting of a main course, salad (yes, people really eat this), and some sort of vegetable (these are edible plants grown in the ground that don’t taste nearly as good as steak, but again, people eat them anyway).

Meals are something married people eat. Which is why they need all that food in the fridge.

Problem is, Lori works a lot. She’s an accountant until 5 p.m., after which she generally attends for a couple hours to her retail business, Li’l Shop of Lori’s. (Free plug for ya there, babe!) By the time she arrives home, dinner time is just a memory.

I’m a liberated dude and I’d be happy to prepare meals, but neither of us feel like eating that late in the day.

So in her absence, I eat the same thing I ate when I was single: sandwiches. I’m not complaining; I like sandwiches. And on the rare occasion I feel like something more elaborate, there’s a Chinese joint not 20 minutes from my front door.

Unfortunately, that full refrigerator turns the making of a sandwich into an operation only slightly less complex than open heart surgery. I know all the ingredients to make a sandwich are in there … somewhere. But where?

As some women have no doubt already noticed, men lack the capability to see beyond the first row of items in any refrigerator. Even those located near the front of the fridge are frequently all but invisible to us.

My long ago sandwich tub contained the following items: 1) sliced ham, 2) sliced turkey, 3) Muenster cheese, 4) smoky horseradish sauce, 5) a tomato, 6) an onion, 7) that fancy mustard with the seeds in it. 

Now, Lori stocks our fridge with all that stuff, but because of the abundance of other food in there, there’s no room for my sandwich tub. Moreover, Lori has a “system” for stocking the fridge. She says – get this! – that there’s “a place for everything and everything in its place.” 

Makes no sense to me.

My sandwich tub made sense. Without that tub I can still usually locate the turkey and maybe an onion. But no cheese or smoky horseradish sauce. I can find the ham, but not the mustard. It’s a nightmare, I tell ya!

We’ve been living in sin for the past couple years and in that time have been unable to resolve the sandwich conflict. We’re only inviting a handful of guests to the wedding on September 11, but I’m hopeful one of them will think to gift me one of those little mini-fridge things. 

It could save our marriage.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273