How To: Get on the Front Page of the Globe & Mail

Answer: Steal a plan and land it on a highway.

My favourite part of the story?

"He sat in here in the store with us for like 30 minutes. He heard us talking about people looking for a man who was running from the law," said Teresa Davidson, 41, a cashier at the place. Mr. Leon tried to buy beef jerky and a lemon-lime Gatorade, but only had enough for the drink, she said.

The fact that the journalist asked what kind of Gatorade it was. And that he didn't have enough cash for the jerky. It may seem trivial, but that's good journalism. Those who don't ask. . . don't get to right sweet stories for the Globe.

Oh . . . and almost related — another story about planes! Although this one wasn't about a crash. See if you can spot the carefully placed 9/11 reference though. Yeah. They did it. I think it's time to let go.

-JENN-

Frightening trends and the media that cover them

This one started with the now infamous Hudson River crash landing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7832191.stm

I've been known to latch on to conspiracies. It's not intentional. You can't really call me paranoid. The only thing that actually frightens me is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but that story's for another time.

There was the one time I found exactly three stories about suicide bombings every day for three weeks, but this whole plane crash coverage is getting ridiculous.

After January's 'Hudson River miracle' — where luckily no one was killed — there have been a startlingly large number of crashes in the news.

The volume speaks for itself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/7840472.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7883338.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7887555.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7887555.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshire/7891120.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lincolnshire/7903339.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7909683.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7927520.stm

Now, I must commend my future colleagues on their tremendously quick reporting. I was also impressed with their innovative tactics, like using Twitter to get comments from people standing on the wing of the NY plane about how frustrated they were to be standing on a wing of a plane in a river (Who wouldn't?).

However, the types of stories that journalists and news services are dragging out of this particular conspiracy are getting tiring.

I'll keep the examples to a minimum here for sanity's sake...

Newspapers reporting about other newspapers:
'Papers impressed by plane escape'

The role of birds in airplane crashes:
'How birds can bring down a plane'

Excellent question...:
'How do you land a plane on water?'

They found a feather on a wing...it was a bird...we get it:
'Feather found on Hudson crash jet'

This one is really digging for a good angle. I'd say a little tactless:
'9/11 widow dies in NY plane crash'

And the list goes on.

While I do understand what it is to have to fill space and follow-up stories, I feel like the plane stuff is getting inflated. When one major accident occurs, all of a sudden all the smaller, more insignificant accidents of the same nature become instantly magnified, until it reaches what I have coined:

The conspiracy.

-JENN-