All the News That's Fit to Print

I rarely watch the evening news for various reasons, but Phil still turns it on and last night I couldn't help hearing that the bad review in the NYT of Guy Fieri's new restaurant on Times Square was mentioned. On the news! The review in the Times yesterday was perhaps the worst review of anything I have ever read. My favorite line was that the marshmallows taste like fish. Why marshmallows I wanted to ask?

But why was the restaurant or the review mentioned on the news? Fieri is certainly more of a celebrity than a chef--is this why? Will this bad review and the media delight in it hurt or help him? Perhaps tourists, clearly the intended patrons of a restaurant on Times Square, will only remember his name and it will be a huge success. I know (ahem) a lot of men who love his FOOD NETWORK show.

If you google his name today, not a single publication or news outlet fails to mention this review. Maybe there is not such thing as bad publicity but read the review and you will wonder.

With all that's going on in the world, can an 18 minutes network newscast afford to waste time on this? Well, yes, because the news spends its last 5 minutes on similar stories every night. Stories geared to the aging population that hasn't discarded its habit of getting their news this way.

Do you listen to the evening news? How do you get your news?

For the record, I read the NYT in the morning although not thoroughly. And I listen to NPR off and one over the day. And I catch bits and pieces from MSNBC, which is on after five here, pretty much nonstop.