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Fly on the Wall 1558

News Year Resolution

It’s bad enough that TV news over-reports crime. But wouldn’t it be nice if local news outlets would stop making things seem even worse than they really are by constantly sharing and re-sharing stories about crime from other cities?

I can’t deny, if local TV stations made a resolution to stop doing this sort of thing, I would miss not being able to report that WMC TV-5 reported that a 61-year-old Green Bay, Wisconsin, man was arrested for tearing down his neighbor’s Christmas decorations while drunk and naked. But honestly, I won’t miss it that much.

Dammit, Gannett

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between an astonishing interactive opportunity and garden-variety sloppiness at The Commercial Appeal these days.

Could it be that text reading, “Your Turn Name Here Guest Columnist” is evidence that Gannett is experimenting with a bold new technology that allows readers like you and me to enter into the narrative and attach our very own byline to a story about Tennessee’s rightward political drift?

Nah, it’s just more of what you get when nobody editing the paper in Iowa cares about readers in Memphis.

Verbatim

“I admit I am tired of changing my voice and wearing a wig in order to report on TV.”— TV news reporter Brittany Noble describing pressure to hide her natural hair as one of reasons she “disappeared from WJTV” in Jackson, Mississippi.