The Lovely Local News

3/24/2009 KARE11 10:00pm

News:Fargo Flood: 3 min.
- Sandbagging
- Weather
- Cresting
- Begging for Volunteers

News:Breckinridge Flood: 1 min.

News:Bismark Flood: 1 min.

News/Weather:Duluth Ice Storm: 30 sec.

News:Elderly couple murder in Hudson, WI: 1 min.

News:Missing man in Crystal Lake: 45 sec.

News/Consumer Safety:Charges against Sarah Jane Olson for Voter Fraud: 3 ½ min.

News:Obama speech about economic recovery: 1 min.

News/Human Interest:Statue of Liberty Crown opening up: 30 sec.

Consumer Interest:Credit Crunch: 5 min.

Weather:Weather: 5 min.

Sports:Sports: 6 min.

Entertainment:Dog Stuck in Tree: 1 min.

Random comments from anchors with weather wrap up: 1 min.

I chose, for this blogpost, to watch KARE11 News because the other local news shows make me kind of depressed for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now…

Looking at the above breakdown of the news, you can see that there was actually a lot of actual news going on in this particular broadcast. I was actually quite impressed! I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with the lack of world news coverage and short time slots allotted to some of the more dramatic local news stories, but they only have 30 minutes.

I picked a pretty unique broadcast to watch; there was a lot of local tragedy going on with the flooding of the Red River Valley so the rhetoric was rather matter of fact. There was a bit of emotional appeal going on in requesting volunteers, but who can fault them for that?

The only part of this particular broadcast that made me raise an eyebrow was the story about Sarah Jane Olson’s return to Minnesota and the possibility of indicting her on voter fraud. It started out as a kind of alert story implied by the urgent speaking tone of the anchors. What transpired, was completely different than what I had anticipated. The people interviewed for this story seemed completely indifferent to Olson’s return and possible voter fraud because she had already spent time in prison. The only person in the whole story to show any concern at all was a state senator, whose name escapes me. KARE11 even went so far as to interview the attorney general about the issue…which is, apparently, a total non issue. Olson had been investigated for voter fraud before and they came up with nothing. It seemed that KARE11 was implying that this woman should just be left alone at this point. I would almost call this segment an entertainment piece because I found the entire topic quite amusing.

What always surprises me about local news is the amount of time the shows spend on weather and sports. I know that weather can be a big factor in peoples’ lives, so it makes sense that a local station would spend so much time on it, but the sports stories can sometimes drag on an on for no apparent reason. On this particular night, they spent a lot of time highlighting scores, which seems legitimate, but I know that in the past KARE11 has spent a lot of time with the “Perk at Play” segment and human interest stories based on local athletes. This suggests that they are playing to our community’s want to know more about personal stories, or are trying to keep us from feeling too negative about the state of things. In other, national, news broadcasts, they tend to focus a lot more on the economy, corrupt politicians, and war.