"Can that story be localized?" is something journalists hear often from their bosses. Never mind that motorcycle sales are way up nationally -- people won't care unless they know that sales are up here, too. And, by the way, go see if you can find a local gay couple to comment on that same-sex marriage trial out in California. They won't have any more insight than all the other people quoted in the story -- in fact, they'll probably be even less articulate -- but they'll be from here. And then there is the most extreme form of the practice:
The University of Notre Dame says four staff members and one alumnus are all accounted for following a major earthquake
in Haiti.
Reports say the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit near Port-au-Prince shortly before 5 p.m. EST, destroying a hospital and causing a tsunami alert that was later canceled. Early reports from officials in Haiti
This is the sort of parochialism so devastatingly parodied by National Lampoon in its Dacron Republican-Democrat mock Sunday paper three decades ago. (Was that Powder Room Prowler ever caught? I wonder.) But there's nothing wrong with caring about our own more than we care about strangers. Some people make the leap to
