When Segregation is a Good Thing

When you turn on the news or open your newspaper or browser you are looking for new knowledge.

When dealing with papers or even the web most news sources offer you sections in which to easily find what you seek.

For example if you are reading the newspaper and really only care about how your local teams did you obviously turn to the sports pages, Section B in most papers. For entertainment we go to section C or the Arts & Leisure and most multi sectioned papers use "D" for their business. (Wouldn't "B" be better for Business?)

If you need to find news on television or cable you may turn to your favorite station but you will have to wait to hear your wanted item unless it is considered "Breaking News." Unfortunately just about everything is considered Breaking News these days.

And if you are among the less educated hateful people you need not wait to turn on The Fox News (?) channel.

But we need a change to the normal conventions that have served us so well for so long.

Nowadays you have to sift through so much flotsam and jetsam to get to the island that contains your wanted article that you may lose interest or forget why you opened the paper in the first place.

I would like to propose a new way of printing and sorting newspapers that may save the industry and allow the public to enjoy the product more.

I propose a combination of the way news used to be reported with the way it is now done. Years ago we paid one penny for the news but that was what we got, the news! Good or bad happy or sad we got the news.

But today we have a conglomerate of fact and fiction; news and opinion; stories of truth and ones that scream, "You lie!"

I want the facts segregated from the rest of the articles. This is what I would love to see from now on:

Section 1 or "A" becomes the news! And by that I mean the radical idea of unadulterated no opinion added straight fact news. Not Fox's version or even MSNBC's more fair version. Factual news that would have made Sargent Friday proud.

Section 2 or "B" could be an entire reprint with a conservative slant followed by the Liberal point of view in Section 3 or "C" (You could do it the other way around but I would prefer a convention that all publications would agree to follow.)

The remaining sections would report Business; Sports; Arts & Leisure; and anything else the publishing company could afford to print. The 'funnies' should be incorporated into the Arts & Leisure section. And advertising would be limited to Sections B and up with no one allowed to mar or spin the news in section 1.

I have left out the weather because until the meteorologists can get up to the point where they are at least 50% accurate I cannot in good faith consider them for section 1. They may have a column reporting on yesterday's weather and how close or far away from right they were with their predictions but for now the 4 day forecasts must appear alongside sports.

Anyone interested in this type of paper contact me through the personals or by commenting below.

And that's the way it is, Thursday, October first, 2009.
This is the Eclectic Curmudgeon signing off. Good night!