Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones...

Now that my Chicago Blackhawks have finished a storybook hockey season culminating in the one-year guardianship of the Stanley Cup, my happy juice has been locked up until fall & the mind wanders to other, less fulfilling and certainly more maddening topics.

Like the current state of online journalism, and the effects the ever-evolving 24/7 news cycle has on its targets.

Like the fine lines between rumor, spin & the truth, reliable sources & hearsay, clueless spokespeople whose words potentially affect an industry, and headline writers who are not much better in my book.

In a morbid case of bad-dream deja vu all over again, June 2010 has the familiar napalm smell of two years ago, when misdirection, bureaucratic bumbling & out-and-out stupidity brought the tomato industry to its knees through absolutely no fault of its own. Read my June '08 blogs forward for the bloodletting from that incident.

Incredibly, it could be happening again. It's been reported for the last week that there have been 71 cases of salmonella linked to central Illinois Subway restaurants, with those stores voluntarily replacing---surprise!---produce items, and if we can assume that the FDA & CDC have learned anything from the past, they are hell-bent on not repeating it. So they're not saying squat this time, while they 'survey' the situation in the war room, covering their hinders with both hands.

Problem is, newspeople don't like that. In fact, if left to their own devices, some of them will take what little snippets of information are provided, analyze it from 19 different angles & then run to the goal line. In this case, it was Melaney Arnold, communications manager for the Illinois Department of Public Health, who stated to The Packer that while originally it was not known what caused the outbreak, the department believed it was a fresh produce item.

Was that a fair statement for her to make? Is she responsible for jackals like 'NewsInferno--News That Matters!' that is reporting this 'belief' as gospel, and wire services that are picking up the story, disseminating to millions? Or does some of that obligation lie with the guy in the middle, Packer reporter Andy Nelson, who's a darn good writer but maybe should have known better in this instance, given the lack of hard facts to this point?

Whatever. It could very well be that I'm just a little punch-drunk from the last three months. This car hasn't run right for awhile now. A twelve-day freeze and a market that drops from $35 to $2 in five weeks will do that to a guy.

Later,

Jay