Monday, June 9, 2014

That’s the news biz for you



June 13, 1980

People on the second shift just don’t get any respect (I’m stealing this from Dangerfield, but I don’t think he’d mind.). This isn’t about labor relations, but damned sports on radio news.
They don’t seem to understand that some people don’t get up in time to hear their morning broadcasts and refuse to announce the sports scores from the previous night. They seem to have an 11th Commandment which says: Thou shall not announce sports scores after 10 a.m.
This, of course, leaves us 11 a.m. risers out in the dust when in trying to find out if our team won or not.
Each day I tune in with the hope that this day will be different, but it never is – the news biz being what it is, and how we are subject to its whims. And each day, I shut off the radio as I do today, and with the need to know this one piece of pointless information, I stumble to the local store like a junkie aching for a fix.
The news stand man grins with his vicious but quiet laughter, demanding payment for the paper before allowing me to search through its pages.
And so I pay, but refuse to give him the satisfaction of my satisfaction and stumble back outside with the paper clutched in my fingers and stop on the sidewalk, aware of the store keeper’s evil stare through the dirty glass as I work through page after page in search of the one I want.
I see his grin as if he knows something I do not.
The news I want is always located in a different part of the paper and so I must look through every page.
Then, I think I see it, but no, this is an advertisement for sports wear, a clue indicating I am close, and finally, I come upon the headline that tells me what I ached to know: Yankees lose by seven.
I drop the paper in the trash as I almost always do, and head back home for another hour’s worth of sleep.


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