Journalism? Nope. Never heard of it.

Some days people ask me what I teach and I say "journalism." Other days people ask me what I teach and I say "mass communication." See if you can guess which kind of day today is:

The saga grew stranger throughout the day. Richard Heene knocked on the windows of journalists camped outside his home early Saturday and promised a "big announcement" in a few hours, then did an about-face when he told reporters that they should leave questions in a cardboard box on the front doorstep. "Absolutely no hoax. I want your questions in the box," he said, waving a cardboard container before going back into his home.

Did you notice the condition entailed here? That for this goober to knock on the windows of journalists camped outside his home, there have to be journalists with windows camped outside his home? Where they're apparently camped (with windows) in lieu of covering any of the 190-some countries they couldn't identify if there were nuclear plumes rising off 'em? Or filing FOIA requests, or learning how to do something useful with a spreadsheet, or having a glass of wine and pondering the vagaries of life, or anything else it might plausibly be interesting for journalists to be doing?

I don't want to get into the habit of quoting Maggie Thatcher, but it seems that starving these yahoos -- and their fellow actors in non-stories everywhere -- of the oxygen of publicity might be the beginning of wisdom.