There’s an old media saying that we just made up last week: If you take all the forecasts from every outlet across an entire region, you still won’t be able to predict the weather any better than a Luddite living in a cave. Still, the press insists on hammering you stranded bastards with snow job after snow job. In fact there’s so much mindless shovel coverage you would almost think that they postponed the Boston Marathon bombing trial.
All things considered, though we promised to use Media Farm for the sole purpose of aggregating (and occasionally eviscerating) reporting on the capital case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, we’re making an exception this week out of sheer desperation. Weather journalism is a rung below sportswriting on the importance spectrum, but we haven’t seen much of anything else through the drifts, so here’s what we came up with …
As it turns out, audiences savor snow tales. Forget the chicken or egg conundrum; if TV news dinks are outside freezing their hairdos and high heels off, it’s because that’s what people are demanding. How do we know? Easy, we checked the “most viewed” lists on local sites, and they all indicate a dangerously gluttonous proclivity toward the consumption of winter fluff.
Let’s start with Boston.com visitors, whose tastes may be more irritating than the title of their third-most-viewed stinker at the time of this writing: “Of SNOWTRON and Snowzilla: How Boston Removed Snow From its Streets Throughout History.” It’s actually a decent piece once you get beyond the headline, as well as a creative way to tap into archives. Still, BDC piled it high and wide as well, dropping bombshells like, “Sunshine, But Very Cold Today, More Snow Tuesday,” plus the Jerry Springer-approved “Guy Took My Spot … So I Put the Snow Back” and the awesomely sarcastic, “Optimistic MBTA Will Have Limited Service on Monday.”
Then there’s BostInno. Let’s see which stories about tech and innovation are killing over there: “Mayor Walsh is Making South Boston Streets One-Way Only Because of the Snow,” “How to Stop Boston Cabbies From Screwing You Over,” and “Wait, the Red Line Is Actually Open?” Oh, and the follow-up of all follow-ups: “Great Response From Southie Street Redirection, More Snow for Tuesday.”
We perused the top picks on WBZ (“Boston to start ‘Full Force’ snow removal,” “One foot away from record,” “Ambulance stuck in snow”), as well as on WCVB, which won’t be satisfied until we’re all scared into eating each other (“Dangerous cold follows record-setting series of storms,” “More snow headed our way as dangerous snow settles in,” “Blizzard: More snow than expected, high winds, lightning”). Mostly muck across the board, though onslaughts of MBTA analysis are always welcome, and David Sharfenberg’s explainer, “The T’s long, winding, infuriating road to failure,” is mandatory reading.
While waiting for the thaw, let’s just hope those DARPA weather-altering devices never come to fruition; as the Hub has seen over the past few weeks, there’s nary any need to pull the wool over the public’s eyes when you can smother them with a blizzard or three. Then again, one snowless article did creep through, a question-and-answer piece on BostonGlobe.com titled, “My 24-year-old is unemployed and at home. What should I do?” Inquiring minds may way to check a story we saw on WBZ: “$30 an hour to shovel out tracks.”
[Media Farm is wrangled by DigBoston News+Features Editor Chris Faraone]
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
