Here's an editorial from yesterday's Journal Gazette that I found especially unsatisfying. The great bulk of it is merely a rehashing of the recent news story about new studies showing that global climate change and bacteria are endangering Indiana beaches -- details piled on details. OK, I get it -- our beaches are getting hotter and diritier. What do you want me to do about it?
We don't get to that until the penultimate sentence, this lonely little exhortation:
The studies should prompt residents in the Great Lakes states to demand greater protections of this important resource.
That's it? Nothing specific or detailed? Maybe you could have used some of that wasted space you spent just retelling the news story. Oh, well.
Hey, you out there -- whoever's in charge of the lakes, OK? Please provide greater protections for this important resource. I demand it, OK?
Don't blame me. The strudies made me do it.
Comments
What do I expect you to do about it? Fix it. Get a shovel and pail and volunteer your time. After all, you Libetarians don't think the government should do anything, so that leaves you. Use plenty of sunscreen - it could take a while.
One would have to admit, the "editorial" reads like all the other AP "mass produced and copied" blurbs todays papers are so found of recycling to fill their pages.
Most papers depend on the AP for the obvious reason that they can't afford to support news bureaus in Washington, Paris, London, Tokyo, etc.
As for editorials, AP doesn't write editorials. They do distribute editorials published in other papers, giving smaller papers the option of running "guest editorials" instead of writing their own. However, they attribute them to the papers that wrote them.