No News is... Par for the Course

While I do love living in New Hampshire, one of the things I miss desperately is decent news coverage. I mean, other states are so into their news that they even carry live police chases right on TV.

We do have a major TV station, which covers news in the morning, at noon, and in the evening at 6 PM and 11 PM (but we are usually asleep for that last one). It's okay, though, because most often the 11 PM newscast is pretty much a repeat of the 6PM show, which is pretty much a repeat of the noon broadcast, which is pretty much a repeat of the morning offerings, which are, of course, pretty much is what was carried the night before. One has to watch the news regularly and not so carefully to appreciate what I am saying. And if there is a major event like a snowstorm or flooding or someone loudly belching, the station devotes pretty much the entire half hour to that event (it's like on that evening there is no other news). Understand this is in a state where for perhaps two years people have been told about the conversion to digital TV, recently with more frequency that political ads a week before the election, but then the conversion date was delayed for several more months because people might not be ready. These are probably the same people who don't know what happens pretty much every April 15th! [Run clip of near-midnight shot of Post Office and the line of people outside waiting to file their tax returns...]).

I do have access to a LOCAL, weekly paper in which one would expect to find local election results; I emphasize the word 'local' because that's the word the paper used when it dropped my weekly column (now found at www.bermansbits.com - I was local but the content wasn't, but that's another story). Usually all I look at in the paper are the obituaries to make sure I am still alive and the not-every-week-but-should-be police and court reports to keep up with what my former students are up to. Beyond that, there's really not much. Interestingly, several years ago, the paper shifted from a Wednesday publication date to Thursday so it could more easily get election results in. That was underscored by this week's paper, which carried the announcement: "Attention readers! Due to deadlines, not all voting results were available at press time. Please check back next week...." The results I wanted to see I can't! I will have to wait an extra week.

On the Internet, I do have perhaps ten or twelve sites I swing through at least two or three times a day to see what's happening on the world's stage. With a click, I can see that, for example, the president of Madagasar has stepped down and handed power to the country's most senior military officer, but I can't find out who won the local school board race.