Get Your Kicks On I-76

I haven’t checked in on everyone’s favorite consumer advocacy columnist, Herb Denenberg, in a while, so I figured it was time for a look-see.

Today, The Evening Bulletin scribe laments the quality of local television news with the standard cracks: the coverage is slanted toward fire, weather, murder, etc.; you don’t learn as much from watching a newscast as you do as reading a newspaper; they bow to advertisers and so forth. Oh, he also says TV news attracts the stupid.

It’s a long tradition of print writers to hold television journalists in contempt. It’s also a long tradition of alt-weekly writers to hold everyone in contempt. It’s a shorter, but no less firmly held, tradition for bloggers to… shit. I don’t really know what we do. Perhaps we’re in the same boat as alt-weekly writers.

Anyway, either way, yes, I don’t necessarily disagree with anything Denenberg wrote today, but I must take umbrage with this passage:

I remember when the Schuylkill Expressway was being partially closed for repair. The station I was at then hyped the story to give the impression that there would be near universal gridlock and a collapse of the transportation system as a result. In fact, the closure created hardly a stir and everyone got to where they wanted to go very nicely.

No. Just no. You can’t go drive through a construction-free Schuylkill at 3 a.m. without feeling as if you could kill every other driver around you and it would be justifiable homicide. No way construction suddenly makes everything peachy keen all of a sudden.

The Slow Death Of Local TV News [The Evening Bulletin]