Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Monday July 12, 2004

Sad State of Local News

So, I'm driving home from work at the unusual hour of 10 minutes to 6pm (unusual for me, but not unusual for most) and on my way home I drive past city hall in my little city of El Segundo.

It's rare that anything too newsworthy happens in El Segundo (I almost saved the "Herald" where they had a car accident between a street sign and a vehicle on the front cover) but this evening all of the local network affiliate newsvans were out in front of city hall. Pretty weird, right? Something must be going on. KABC had two vans there. And they all had those little microwave dishes up in the sky so they could broadcast their images wherever for live coverage.

Since I was going to be arriving home early enough to actually be able to see the local news, I figured I'd tune in and see what was going on. All I saw was:

• Some local city official is involved in something that is designed to get juveniles who have committed crimes onto a work track
• Someone is possibly poisioning cats at UCLA, as three ferrel cats have been found dead in recent days; the woman who has been putting out food and water for these cats has called some local organization to try to catch the person committing this felony act
• It may rain this week
• There are wildfires in the area
• Shaq is moving on
• ...

Anyway, my frustration is that local news never seems to be very good. Most of it is "why you may be killed by xyz disease, news at 11" or "the new diet you have to hear about" or other various things that get people to tune in, but aren't really news.

I remember some time ago seeing a story about a house where a woman had died and the house was filled with cats and their excrement, amongst other junk to be carried out by the dumpster-full. It's always sad to me that it's that kind of thing that gets news coverage, rather than other local happenings. It seems to be the Jerry Springer approach to news: you need some kind of shocking event/pictures to run a story. The things that actually affect my life aren't covered at all.

Update: Apparently all the news vans were there for a press conference about a woman abducted from her home. I hope they can find her. She lives about 3 blocks from my home.