by G. Sax
In the Twin Cities this week, the heat is back with a vengeance. Yesterday was the hottest day in the metro in nearly two years. Such heat causes head fog, and I was all loose noggined about what I was going to write about for today.
At one point, I was going to call today's offering "Pot Poury," and I was just going to spew a potpourri of themes I've written about for the last several months:
Last night's softball game, my jogging routes around St. Paul as I prepare for my Grandma's Marathon adventure next month, or hardcore local real estate topics. Bars. Bouncing. Baseball at the St. Paul Saints home opener. Plenty of repeatable themes as we embark upon a new season.
But then I had a cold glass of milk, took an hour-long nap, and decided to go with a late-breaking story that plays on my interests in media and why I think a place like the St. Paul Real Estate Blog is every bit as media relevant as the Sunday paper or the afternoon drive-time radio broadcast.
KARE-TV, the local NBC affiliate, announced that 20-year veteran anchor and reporter Rick Kupchella will leave the station in June to pursue his own outside media content interests.
His reporting style was somewhat abrasive to me, but he seemed to attack his job with zeal. Being an investigative journalist didn't always mesh perfectly with the intangibles the couchbound want from their talking head. I'm sure he's a genuine, talented guy and all, but I often struggled to see through a layer of TV smarm myself. I don't pretend this is a fair assessment. It's an opinion.
Which is what blogs are awesome for in that they can be a good grounding point for local news AND opinion. Hey, just like a newspaper or a talk radio show. And less like local TV news, which relies heavily on good makeup and clean clothes on one side, and on fast trucks and powerful cameras on the other.
Blogs don't seem as shiny new as they did a few years ago, but the best are enduring and getting press credentials and being a worthy resource for the newsworthy. And over the last few years, I'm getting as much of my "news" from blogs and social media as I am from newspapers and TV. Probably more, because news aggregators like Yahoo! and Google fill in other blanks by the time I get to the late local news.
Some lament the nationalizing of the news and the disappearing status of the local newspaper, radio, and TV news. I say evolve already. Newspapers are no longer the most convenient option. Talk radio can be painfully repetitive. And there are no less than four Twin Cities TV stations stating the same news items each night at the same time.
Meanwhile, I'm getting hyperlocal newsbits from around the city every minute from unfiltered resources without commercial interruption. I don't lament this. I think it's a revelation.
