Zombies on Autopilot

I'm talking about my former journalistic kin on Groundhog Day. Hey, it's February 2, so let's dig out the non-stories about local groundhogs that we do EVERY BLOODY YEAR and run with them again! That's what people really want to hear when they wake up.

There used to be an old semi-joke in newsrooms that you could pretty well write a standard five-minute radio newscast for, say, Christmas morning, and just fill in the blanks. You know, "The bells rang out in St. Peter's Square welcoming Christmas...a spark from faulty Christmas tree lights is blamed for the fire in [insert city name] that left [insert number] people homeless...[insert celebrity name] spent this Christmas holiday at a soup kitchen..." and so forth.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what I heard when I got up this morning, only the Groundhog Day version. Will [fill in smalltown name]'s loveable groundhog [alliterative name] see his shadow? Let's go live...

No. Let's not. Not only is it an auto-story older than I am, it's really a NON-story. Because there will be six more weeks of winter, no matter whether some frightened animal is dragged before the cameras to "see his shadow." See, it's something called a calendar. It's six weeks until the vernal equinox. You know - Spring.

And it's the kind of garbage that leads a lot of people to wonder precisely why they should waste time listening to big-media newscasts. "Hey, Mike, give us the latest on Podunk Pete - did he see his shadow?"

No thinking required. Or, apparently, allowed.