One born every minute

Stop press! That's Drudge above, coyly using the question mark to kick some paranoid speculation closer to the mainstream. The Gateway Pundit is less circumspect:

... but probably still shouldn't go to the county fair by himself. The evidence appears to be that, um, someone created a file while the story was still being reported. Because that's never happened in the history of journalism.

For the record, I'm singularly unimpressed by the idea that AP's declaration of a "presumptive" nominee is somehow relevant.  I have enough trouble keeping up with fictional categories and made-up titles as it is.

'Scuse me while I bury Paul

Stop press! Everything we hold dear is under attack from an unexpected quarter, according to the morning's No. 4 story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network:

Either this is a brilliant marketing campaign or McDonald's has egg on its face.

Or, when in doubt, bet the null: (c), neither of the above.

Customers have complained that a talking minions toy included in recent Happy Meals uses curse words.

Some news organizations really shouldn't play those friendly games of chance by themselves. On the bright side, the minion doesn't seem to be saying "Islam is the light" this time. But what is it up to?

Concerned Parent said her 5-year-old daughter, Daughter, opened up the minion toy from her McDonald's Happy Meal while she was sitting in the back seat of their car  and what they heard immediately got their attention.

Parent said she heard, "What the F-," (expletive) followed by "All be damned." The little girl's grandmother thought Daughter said it at first. "She said, 'no that wasn't me, that's the minion, that's the toy,'" Parent told FOX 13.

Language learning is a wonderful thing. Could we hypothesize that a standard-issue 5-year-old who has learned how to say "What the fuck?" has probably also learned how to blame it on Barbie, her little brother or Muggles the kitten? You can enjoy the video clip for yourself, but I wouldn't call the audible part of that any closer to "All be damned" (whatever that means) than to "yabba-dabba-doo."

People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Journalism won't fix that by telling people that they didn't really see their preferred deity on a tortilla chip, or that their kids will stumble into sex and drugs perfectly well without the help of coded messages from the entertainment industry. But we can -- you know, thank the caller politely and hang up, thus saving space and time for things that really did happen.

There's actually some free advice for Fox News in general here. If you really want those BENGHAZI!!!!! exclusives to drive your election coverage, you should think about cultivating an aura of enlightened skepticism. If your fondness for made-up stories starts to form a pattern, readers might notice.

Today in visual journalism: 'Dive bar stock photo'

Quick, what's the best way to get a little free publicity for your website? Make a list of "the NN most RR in ZZ" and wait for some news director to say "Hey, we made the list!"

Leave aside the obvious -- how the judging is done, and whether something called impulcity.com is going to have the same operational definition of "dive" that you or Raymond Chandler or the Bottle Rockets might have. Gaze upon the cutline:

"Dive bar stock photo."

And as 2014 draws to a close, the best a news operation can do to illustrate a PR person's idea of a dive bar is a filer of somebody else's idea of a dive bar. Divewise, these are trying times.

Tell them to buy an ad next time

Somebody at the county fair must have seen the Wichita Eagle coming:

Maybe it’s our meat-and-potatoes, no-frills M.O.

Maybe it’s our common-sense, git-r-done attitude.

Maybe our work ethic is so good that we can get things done faster than anyone else.

Whatever it is, Kansas, we’re No. 1.

At least when it comes to making a holiday meal fast, according to a survey by Del Monte.

It's official: When Christmas comes early for some happy public relations department, 'tis the season for Survey Grinch to kick the story back with a few questions:

(a) What do you think is true about your story?
(b) Given any answer other than "nothing" to (a), what do you think is interesting about it?

The fruit and vegetable company asked 2,500 Americans how long it takes them to prep for a holiday meal. Kansans who answered the survey spent the least amount of time – an average of 3.6 hours, according to a news release.

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Step right up, step right up!

Ermagerd did you see what the gummint did NOW?!?!?!??? It stopped an innocent woman from spending her foreign money here because some foreign words they can't pronounce at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network sound like some other foreign words they can't pronounce at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network either!

And if that don't fetch 'em, I don't know Arkansaw. But before we go to the comments, let's get to the substance of the piece:
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There's one born every minute

If you haven't seen the "scary market chart" yet, maybe you should look in now that it's, um, "gaining traction":

There are eerie parallels between the stock market’s recent behavior and how it behaved right before the 1929 crash.

That at least is the conclusion reached by a frightening chart that has been making the rounds on Wall Street. The chart superimposes the market’s recent performance on top of a plot of its gyrations in 1928 and 1929.

The picture isn’t pretty. And it’s not as easy as you might think to wriggle out from underneath the bearish significance of this chart.
 
Easier than it looks, actually, if you're used to wiggling out from under the rock of -- oh, random stuff that looks like stuff you want it to look like. Remind us again how we're supposed to distinguish the fearless reporting of the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch from any other incarnation of strange resemblances meant to scare the rubes?

When in doubt, bet the null

Shore up our confidence there, Miami Herald: 

The sewage czars of South Florida have got your backside on Super Bowl Sunday.

Their mission: To make your toilet bowl flush properly during the big game.

So many people use the john just during halftime and after the game that water pressure at Miami-Dade County’s three wastewater treatment plants can drop to fearfully low levels.

Sigh. You can either head straight for the nice list of "Super Bowl legends" at snopes.com or you can reason it through on your own:
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One out of three ain't bad

Well, no. No and no. There's no indication that alligators have become "popular guards for drug dealers," and no "authorities" paint this as a "growing trend." I suppose it's technically a "crime" story, in the Elmore Leonard sense of people bumbling through illegal stuff on their way to something more interesting, but basically we have a breathless 1A trender that falls apart when you start pulling at the threads. So let's:

Looking for more bite than bark?

Drug dealers, long associated with aggressive dogs like pit bulls, are of late opting for a more cold-blooded accomplice to protect their business interests: the alligator.

Getting an idea of what sort of evidence ought to follow?
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Traffic and weather next

Maybe you guys should just stick to the traffic reports, huh?

DETROIT (WWJ) - It’s back-to-school season and many Detroit teachers are struggling in the wake of budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms.

According to the National School Supply and Equipment Association, the average teacher spent at least $485 on school supplies for their classroom last year.

Ready for the buried lede?

So, what are some Detroit women doing to offset their struggles in the classroom? Well, they’re becoming “sugar babies” of course —  seeking financial assistance from wealthy men online.
 
Ready for the methods section?

In the Detroit School District alone, more than 200 teachers are moonlighting as sugar babies to offset wage cuts and job losses, according to dating website SeekingArrangement.com. How do they know? The website tallied up all the females registered in Detroit who list “teacher” as their occupation.

Uh, OK. And we stumbled on this world exclusive ... how?
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One born every minute

Or, to judge by Monday's paper, several are born every minute. What else are we to make of the simultaneous appearance on the front of "More people hiring life coaches to help them over the hurdles" and "Pet owners turning to psychics, tarot"?

A hint for the folks downtown: If the hed on your consumer watchdog column* says "Do you need a life coach?" and the answer is something other than "step right up, step right up!" or "it's your checkbook," ur doin it wrong. (Which, in turn, should remind you that there's an entire online enterprise that can tell you what your pet is thinking free of charge.)

Speaking of headlines: Have any of you out there ever met a dog named Fido? Or is that another tradition that lives on only in cliched ledes?

* The online version, at least

No, but thanks for asking

What is it about the Stupidity Tax that brings out the Stupid Question at America's copy desks? No, don't answer that.

It is kind of a reminder, though, that if you want people to trust your polling data come election season, two good starting points would be:

1) Never invent stuff about public opinion
2) Leave the "you may already be a winner!!!" to the hucksters themselves

Any questions? No, don't answer that either.

Elusive yellow menace

What's worth the front page today there, Wichita Eagle?

Bigfoot lives.

Well, not really. Actually, not at all.

He apparently doesn’t live a flashy life in Kansas. Here, he stays pretty much undercover and lives more conservatively than say his counterparts in California and Washington state where paparazzi have occasionally snapped photos and videos of the famed elusive beast.

As long as we're putting made-up stories about the Elongated Yellow Monster* on the front page*, could we at least have some commas around, say, "say?"

Sigh. It's becoming painfully clear that our friends at Animal Planet can commandeer a chunk of space from the vigilant watchdog that is the American press pretty much whenever they want**, simply by saying "BIGFOOT!!!!" Please, dear editors: If you can't tell a made-up story when you see one, stay away from those friendly games of chance when the fair arrives in town next summer.

* Initially trapped and identified as such in the wild by Lisa at the Bremner Center, who also shared the story's occurrence in the KCStar
** Do people just not read Daniel Boorstin anymore?

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/01/27/2653050/animal-planet-show-comes-to-wichita.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Learn now the lore of clueless features

Today's hed tip: When you feel compelled to write a deck that knocks down the question in your question hed, that should be a sign unto you that the story beneath it is losing air rapidly:

One of the biggest holiday films this year, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is based on British writer J.R.R. Tolkien's 1937 fantasy novel. But it turns into a mystery when Kentucky is linked to the worldwide literary classic. (1)

No, it doesn't -- at least, not much of one.

"There has been a lot of speculation that Kentucky had something to do with inspiring Middle-earth, the setting of the book, and the hobbits and their practices," said Devin Brown, an English professor at Asbury University.

That's as may be (though how much speculation counts as "a lot" is a different matter). There's plenty of speculation about plenty of things out there. What you do with that speculation before you put it in the front page actually tells your readers a lot about how you treat speculation -- and readers -- in general. Let's have a look:

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How not to introduce a paywall

Just thinking out loud here, but -- do you suppose, if it's the day you unveil the paywall that's supposed to keep the unwashed at bay, you might want to make extra-sure the content that reaches the homepage is worth paying for? Rather than, for example:

... Professional astrologer, Steve Nelson,* author of “The New World Cycle of Celebrations,” says that no traditional Mayan prophecies or present day Mayan elders predict calamity for the end of this calendar cycle.

Instead, what he says is predicted is a global shift in awareness, a transformation of consciousness such that the world may actually end as we know it on the psychic level.

Do tell!

Nelson, 65, who refers to himself as a cycles counselor, says that several cultural and mystical traditions converge in this time all portending the beginning of a new age. However, we must work to clear through the darkness that precedes this anticipated new era.
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