Pixelated Semantics

Dying for a headline

Reuter's newswire hits the silly season: the privation of the lack of news perhaps is behind their Odd News feed suddenly publishing 4 death-related stories in sequence. "Don't Read This One..." is the heading on the current item, which proceeds to unwrap a tale of homosexuality, drugs, and late night cannibalism worthy of a movie. Preceded by "Dead Thief's Family Returns Church Bell" (The family of an Albanian man who died in a car crash a few years after stealing the bell of an Orthodox church has returned the bell saying the theft doomed the robber). Continuing the theme, minus a corpse, next is "Police Find Marijuana Stashed in Coffins" (Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers find half a ton of marijuana stashed in four coffins), preceded by the "Olympic-Size Stink Over Dumped Dead Pets" (which cautions that residents of Beijing are worried that "the careless disposal of dead pets" is hurting their campaign for a "green" Olympic Games). Sometime between 12.44am and 1.04am this morning it seems the spectre of death made an editor's day, one who knows that titling anything "Don't Read This One" is a sure way to have it read, widely. And it seems the most recent posting is really about the death of public access to information: how the central California town of Salinas, birthplace of Nobel prize-winning author John Steinbeck (who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath)" will close its three libraries next year to "cut costs".

Item posted by AutoEditor at 9:02 am ::