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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Business Reporting Is "Special" At The News-Gazette |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
04 Jun 2001
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Business reporting, as regular, critical readers of the Champaign News-Gazette already know, is always done with special care for the interests of business in our community. |
People have grown used to the fact that, for the News-Gazette, news about unions and environmental regulations is usually only fit to be buried carefully in the Business & Agriculture page where they hope that only business people who need worry about such things will read it.
Every once in awhile, this tendency to view everything the way a business person would leaves one aghast at the the seeming apathy about the results of how these stories are presented. Today's (Monday, June 4) Business & Ag page had a story by Debra Pressey about the reliability of Trans World Express flights from Willard Airport to St. Louis.
It seems that TWE is pretty proud of the fact that, in April, 99% of all their flights were "completed." This is an increase of 2% over their performance in April 2000. It is left unsaid what "completed" means and what the consequences of being on a flight that was not "completed" might be. This is a little scary in the Brave New World of Corporate Doublespeak that we seem to live in at the News-Gazette. Did the flights that were not "completed" crash? Did they never take off and the people on them are still sitting at the end of a remote runway at Willard wondering why the drinks ran out a couple of weeks ago? Or were they abducted by UFOs?
Nothing is really clear about why this is really even news. Even what kind of news, good or bad, isn't very clear either. I guess it's best just to talk about the flights "completed," hence successful, than it is to even speak of what happened on those which were not, somehow, "complete."
I'm glad the News-Gazette is keeping a good, impartial eye on all these businesses in town. I'm sure we can all sleep more easily knowing they are hard at work keeping a close watch on all the business "success" that you can stand reading about. |
See also:
http://www.newspoetry.com/
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