I am privileged to live in the world's largest media market - the New York metropolitan area. We have local affiliates or all 4 major media outlets (ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC), a PBS affiliate, and two other local channels (9 & 11 ... I watch them so rarely I can't actually remember their call letters - one of them is apparently affiliated with something called the CW network - good for them!) Also, Most cable providers in the also have a local news channel. So ... NO SHORTAGE of localm news outlets hereabouts, no siree!
I'm acutally about 60 miles north of the Big Apple, west of the Hudson River, in a town called Chester (which is, of course, WEST of the county called Westchester, but I shouldn't digress into life's absurdities this early in a diary, now, should I?) As many of you know, yesterday, the Northeastern part of the country had it's fourth Nor'easter in as many weeks. Our diligent local media began preparing us for this horrific event even as we were digging out from the last one. Potential for HUGE accumulations - 12 to 18 inches in some places, coming down at an rate of an inch or 2 an hour! Now, when there's some tough weather coming, the guy who does the weather on our CBS affiliate takes off his jacket & tie, and rolls up his sleeves. They’ve even made a graphic for that now ... SLEEVES UP!
Remember the days when TV semi=respectable a good job of covering HARD NEWS? Now they throw everything they've got at HARD WEATHER. On a normal day, our local news broadcast will feature at least a couple of national and international stories. When it snows, though - FUHGGEDABOUDIT! No local NYC news outlet mentioned anything that didn't have to do with weather yesterday! If you live in this area, nothing else happened! The rest of civilization is just plain called off when it snows in New York, don't'cha know?
I work about 45 minutes from my home, but over a state line, in Bergen County, New Jersey. Predictions for yesterday's weather were sufficiently dire that NJ's new Governor, Phil Murphy, shut the state down (quite an accomplishment ... all Chris Christie managed to shut down was a single escape route!) All non-essential personnel were strongly urged to stay off the roads. Being a good citizen, I elected to waste yet another semi-precious vacation day on the weather, and stay home. And the weather shills on every TV channel did their level best to make everything look and sound as bad as possible.
So here on the morning after the "calamity" I have this to report - nowhere in the metro area did we accumulate over a paltry 6" of snow. Not a particularly impressive tally for our area, by any stretch of the imagination. At my house, I saw two flurries while the sun was out. Snow that actually began to accumulate finally began at about 10:30 last night, and left less than an inch in my driveway.
Now I get it. Weather reporting is EASY, and non-controversial. You report the facts, you send people far & wide throughout the region with cameras, you show pictures & talk about it. Bad weather inconveniences pretty much everyone, and everyone over the age of 12 who is not at a ski resort feels pretty much the same way about it. News reporting, on the other hand, is DIFFICULT, and lately, quite controversial. A reporter has to chase down people, uncover facts that those people might not want revealed, and a percentage of your viewership is guaranteed to think the reporting is false, if it happens to make a person whom they have chosen to respect appear less respectable.
But hey - that's the job you guys signed up for! So I, for one, would like to see a lot more HARD NEWS reporting in the future, and a good deal less fuss made over what may or may not turn out to be HARD WEATHER.