!! Breaking News !!

Perhaps the most hackneyed expression in the news is “breaking news”.


In years past when I saw the bright red banner "Breaking News" on the screen I would stop what I was doing and pay attention. After all, what was soon to follow was sure to be a real ground trembler, or a tsunami, or any cataclysmic event worthy of my immediate and complete attention, right?


Over the last decade "breaking news" standards have slipped to say the least. Celebrity news like, for example, “Britney blows fresh breath” make instant headlines, but quite frankly I could care less. Disaster news like wildfires rampaging somewhere or 50 car pile ups in a fog somewhere put me to sleep.


It is not that I could care less; it is that I care too much.


The truth is I am shell shocked by the onslaught of "bad" news breaking over me continuously. I know I am suffering from some new, as yet unpublished form of distress syndrome brought about by the continuous bombarding of my senses with heartbreaking news.


By now I am more than ready to hear some "breaking news" that isn’t heartbreaking. My guess is that millions of others are also. So how about a new e-zine called “Good News“? Does anybody want to subscribe?

Didn't think so. (The sad truth is “good news” just doesn’t sell well.)