This just in....someone just called us to say that their cat, who has been missing, was discovered at the neighbor's house. Only problem is, the neighbors are out of town and the cat is trapped inside. What do we do? Call the local TV news and they'll make a story out of it. This is a true story. Channel 8 did a "news" piece on this cat that was trapped in the neighbor's house. At one point, with reporter and cameraman standing at the door, viewers could hear the trapped cat meow in response to someone calling out it's name.

Cut to another channel on you can see the Health reporter doing a story on wearing a bio-hazard suit. Apparently, WZZM 13 consulted the GOP playbook, ala John Kerry in a similar get up. This was nowhere near the absurdity of the channel 13 story where the news anchors did a live interview with a woman who was at an Extreme Makeover contestant tryout. This woman was wear a medical gown and had all these magic marker lines on her face demarcating the areas she could use some surgical enhancement. She talked at length about the process and said she'd like to regain some of the beauty of her youth. She demonstrated this by producing a picture of when she was a Playboy bunny. At one point she was asked, with a straight face, by a newscaster why she was doing this. Her response was "well, I have inner peace but I could a little work on the outside."

Then there is Booger the duck, who according to channel 13 ran for office in the town of Sparta. As a joke, Booger's owner put his name on the ballot not thinking much of it, that is until one of the local news stations got wind of it. This story was nearly 3 minutes in length, which is pretty ridiculous, but even more ridiculous when you compare it to actual live human candidate stories. Here at GRIID we just completed a painful election coverage study and found that all of the local races like county commissioner, clerk, sheriff, and judges combined received less coverage than Booger the duck.

News Flash - there is a shortage of flu shots in Kent County. Chopper 8 is bringing us live footage of people standing in line to get a flu shot. Now doesn't it warm your heart to know that the local TV news people are spending hard earned advertising dollars to film people standing in line. This story was so prolific, that the 3 local TV stations ran a combined 56 stories over a month period.

If you are still scratching your head over the outcome of the November election you may find some solace in the fact that if people were relying on local TV news they could not make an informed vote. This may explain the outcome of many races and ballot proposals. With the Presidential race, the majority of stories we documented could be classified as horse race coverage or stenography. A typical horse race story would be an announcement of where candidates were traveling to, who they were speaking with or what fundraiser they were attending. Stories that we noted as stenography would often include an excerpt from one of the candidates and then a summary of their speech by the reporter. On the surface this may seem useful to the viewer, but unless reporters actually verify the comments that were made, whether it has to do with a candidate's platform or voting record, then the story is just transcribing events. To view the full study, just go to the GRIID site.

Well, to find humor in such banality we invite you to attend our annual fundraiser known as the Newzees. It's our once in a year opportunity to make fun of the local news people by doing spoof news and sometimes just running their stories by themselves, because we could not make this stuff up. Even in the process of preparing for the Newzees my crafty media watchdog partner Tom spotted a notice online that the WZZM 13 weather ball mascot Blinkie would be at Barnes & Noble. We went and had our picture taken with him so we could use it as part of the promotional literature. So if you aren't doing anything on Monday, December 6 at 7pm come to the UICA on 41 Sheldon SE and see reporter Brad Edwards use a man's underwear as a prop for an election story.

Jeff Smith's favorite local newscaster is Lee Van Amyde. Ask him why at jsmith@grcmc.org.