We are bombarded by news. Everywhere you look there seems to be a TV or computer screen or radio telling you what's going on everywhere...at all times! Everything is BREAKING NEWS which just might mean that nothing is BREAKING NEWS anymore. Then, there are those little tickers that run on the bottom of the screen telling us just enough of the story to make us worry.

When I was growing up we really only had two and a half networks. ABC was not much to look at in the early days of TV news. So, that meant you either got your news from Walter Cronkite on CBS or NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report. Watching the evening news was a communal experience and most of my friends' families would tune in to see what had happened that day. You couldn't just flip on the TV or computer and get your news whenever you wanted it so, if you wanted to be informed, you read the morning paper and watched the evening news. We were a Huntley-Brinkley household because my dad thought David Brinkley was funny. Our dinner was pretty well-timed to be on the table as soon as we heard "Goodnight, Chet. Goodnight, David."

Today it is a different story. Everybody is, potentially, a photo-journalist. Home-made phone pictures and video show up on the news more and more often. With so much air-time devoted to news, on the local and national level, things pop-up that never would've made it before. On the national cable news outlets, I've seen a car-fire on an interstate in Ohio...it wasn't holding up traffic and the car's owner was standing in the ditch watching it, but there was helicopter video available and time to fill, so there it was. I've seen phone-recorded video of high school kids having a fight. Now, that's an unfortunate thing, but is it really news? Naturally, the news channel used the video to lead into a discussion about violence among teens; a worthy enough topic but I think they only did the "scholarly" post-discussion to give them an excuse to use the video over and over and over....and over. I've even seen stories about cats caught up in trees on the national news shows. It makes you wonder which came first: all this "news" which then absolutely had to be reported, making 24/7 news-channels a necessity or the 24/7 news-channels which makes everything newsworthy? My guess is the latter. When I hear someone on the TV say "you must see this" or "you won't believe this amazing video" my reaction usually is "No, I don't have to see it and it probably isn't that amazing but, regardless, why wouldn't I believe it?" Not everything is really "must-see" and "amazing" or, frankly, deathly dangerous which describes another oft-used idea to grab our attention. Maybe I should try to work more of that drama into my weather "Snow Flurries: They Look Pretty But Are They Trying to Kill YOU!" or, during spring-storm season "Is There A Predator Living in Your Basement? Now, Where Will You And Your Children Go To Be Safe In The STORM?!?" The great singer/songwriter John Hiatt has a song called Uncommon Connection that talks about stuff "flying in my head from every direction." That seems about right, nowadays.

I do understand the argument that we are better off with more news sources and that it gives alternative voices a chance to be heard. (Although, if we look closely at who owns what, we might be surprised about the small number of hands into which we entrust the news.) Still, sometimes it seems we are so overwhelmed by all the information, good and bad, coming our way that we tune out and become less engaged than in the old days. Personally, I have always been interested in current events. I read the papers everyday, read Newsweek and Time, watch the Sunday morning news shows and, of course, see and hear FirstNews. I use the Internet to access papers and news sources from all over the world. So, I'm not a "head-in-the-sand" advocate. But, sometimes, it is a good idea to pull back from the constant swirl.

So, Wednesday, I didn't have any news on in the car or at home. How did I find out about the news of the day...the chemical plant explosion and fire? Not from the Internet or TV or radio or text-message on the cellphone. Nope. My main news source was my mom. She had heard about the situation on the radio and called me. A woman in a cottage on a lake in Wisconsin kept me in the Kansas City news loop! Now, that's coverage you can count on!