News that shows up on Saturday and Sunday, good, bad or incidental, usually does so for one of three reasons.
Weekend incidental news is news which happened on a weekend, which includes very late Friday, all day Saturday, and most, but not all of Sunday. If incidental news happens too late on Sunday it gets reported on Monday.
That leaves the other two reasons, both non-incidental, mostly fabricated news.
The first kind of non-incidental news is published on weekends because those who publish the news for newspapers and television stations to print and broadcast are inept, and don’t fully appreciate that most people don’t pay attention to that kind of good news, and pay even less attention when it is published on a weekend. Or, those who make up such news are afraid their message will be drowned out among real news during weekdays.
Whichever it is, The Great Whale Count on Maui is such news. It’s important news and this year it was good news. 1,726 whales were sighted in a three-hour period Saturday morning. Unfortunately, most people don’t care much about whales(dinosaurs are #1), care less for real news on the weekend (shopping is #1), and the rest of us wonder about the counting methodology.
How do a few hundred people out and about around Maui’s coastal waters count the whales in such a way that there are no duplicates in the count? A whale is pretty much a whale, right? This year’s record turnout of whales topped the previous record of 1,265 whales counted in 2006. Last year there were only 959 whales counted. Whatever the methodology, the count is not very consistent, hence the doubt about methodology and accuracy.
The second kind of this kind of weekend news is news which must become news, therefore public, but the kind of news whereby the newsmaker doesn’t really want you to pay attention. In other words, it’s better that no one hear of bad news or unpopular news which must be published so it’s usually published on a weekend. Politicians bearing bad news use the weekend technique all the time.
Honolulu’s Fixed Guideway Technology Selection Panel selected steel wheels on steel rail for Oahu’s ‘soon to be more expensive than a bus ride to Jupiter mass transit system.’ Knowing that any news having to do with fixed rail transit on Oahu will be unpopular, the city chose to dump the news deep into the bowels of a sunny weekend. Why? Because most people don’t pay attention to news, good or bad, on weekends.
Bad news that gets released on a Monday or Tuesday and climbs to the top of the media psyche could stay there and fester like an open puss-filled wound for days. Smart political hacks don’t want that, hence not-so-good news, and totally-bad bad news sees light of day in the dark of the weekend.
Honolulu residents are going to love the clatter, clank and clang of their own personal railroad wafting through our once clean island air. Anyone who’s ever lived near a railroad will tell you how enjoyable it will become for island residents, now stunned into stunted and deafened submission by the daily noise buses, cars, trucks, mopeds, motorcycles, planes, helicopters, garbage trucks, and screaming neighbors (over stressed by noise, obviously).
What’s another 20 or 30 decibels of metal-on-metal sound between friends?
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