A brief look into sensational news

Every day when I pass through the Yahoo! front page to access my email, I am struck by horror at the articles that it displays on its front. Today, it was “Lebron James gets booed at a wedding.” My morbid curiosity made me click the arrow on the bottom of the rectangle to see if Yahoo! can redeem itself. I found “Ironic initials for driver’s baby” and “What your desk says about you.” Alas, I found it hopeless. I bet the Onion’s writers has lots of fun with their articles because they write them for the purpose of being ridiculous; I don’t hate Yahoo! enough to believe that it publishes all the articles that it does with a straight face.

Granted, Yahoo! does publish solid news. But it is also true that much of the solid news don’t make it to the front display and settle for subordinate positions below it, and even if one article does make it, it sits alongside “Wrong way to cover a sneeze.” Sensational news printing is also not an exclusively a Yahoo! phenomenon.

Reading sensational news is, for the most part, not valuable. Knowing that a new type of chili is so spicy that it can be made into a weapon is unnecessary, unless you are in the chili research department for the government or you are playing “Bluff the Listener” on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.

However, it is not valuable in the same way that a thriller novel or a plot-less video game is not valuable: all three can still be quite enjoyable. But don’t let any of them get in the way of what you want or need to do. Sensational news is very rarely, if ever, worth your job, your homework, your much-needed grocery trip, or your child.