Back! And backlogged...

It was nice to get away, even if this was a relatively minor vacation. Still, it's nice to come back to the land of trees, breezes and still-blooming flowers after spending time in a hot, brown, dry climate for a few days.

I'm currently wading through the news I missed, made more difficult by my ongoing frustration with the Gazette-Times' unwillingness or inability to make the best of the news space they are allotted. As most small papers do, the GT sells advertising space first, which determines the "news hole" for a specific day. Sometimes, the news hole is very limited, so the GT skimps on national and international news in favor of local news, to better compete with papers that offer better global coverage, such as the Oregonian.

This makes sense most of the time. Corvallis is no backwater town, nor is it a suburb of a larger city. Local news needs a venue. Hey, it's what keeps this blog going. Even newspaper sections like Lifestyles and Food and whatnot serve a purpose.

However, with all the issues of actual importance to cover, especially with the glut of international crises rising to the surface, it bugs the heck out of me to see the GT publishing pictures of their employees and their pets in a matchmaker contest in the main section of the newspaper. Isn't this the sort of party game put on by employers for their company picnics? Are the reporters really not able to find actual news? I almost prefer it when the GT publishes an AP Wire story and cuts off the last paragraph in mid-sentence.