HOPE THEY PAY MOVING COSTS!

Flirtatious: "Need a ride to the new campus?"

Real Mood: Rib Nudging

Prediction: A woman from either Olney, England or Liberal, Kansas will win the annual Pancake Day race on Shrove Tuesday, 2007. Mark my word!

So the headline above is in the Rocky Mountain News. In case your screen is small? The sub-head reads "Louisville employees going to Broomfield."

If you live around here? And you finally read the sub-head? You start laughing.  I'll tell you why in a minute.  But let's back up.

I know I've said in this forum that I'm determined I'll neither a "media critic" nor a "media apologist" be.  And what I mean by this is I don't want a label.  I'm certainly going to point out the excesses and foibles of the professions and their products as I see them.  And I'm particularly going to do that when what I see makes me "guffaw."

Some time ago I remember ruing the day The Christian Science Monitor started using headlines. One of the great things about that newspaper was it's passionate commitment to fairness. Not sensationalizing their stories with headlines was a testament to that commitment.

I suppose I can still compliment the Monitor along with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. When you read their headlines they tend to be a PRETTY good indication of what's going to be in the article. They are still clearly on the opposite end of the sensational continuum of the tabloids.  But like TV and Radio teases and promotions, headlines are designed to get your attention. Perception and perspective be damned! "We just want you on board."

Okay, back to the case in point. Had you just moved to town? Had you just had a second to scan the headlines with your latte? You could be forgiven if your heart started bleeding for these poor souls. They will have to pack up all their worldly goods, sell their homes, yank the kids out of school and leave Kentucky for some "God Awful" town named for a Broom.

"Wait a cotton pickin' minute!"

This Louisville is a suburb of Denver.  Not that it's critical, but the pronunciation of this Louisville is not debatable.  Say "LOO' us ville." Still these one thousand workers must now commute to this new town, Broomfield.

The lead "graph" in the story hints at the deceptive nature of the headline.  It reads, "Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to move approximately 1,000 or more of it's employees to its Broomfield campus from its nearby Louisville campus."

How nearby? Well first of all you should probably know the distance between the city and county of Broomfield and the town of Louisville? The distance would be the microscopic width of a pencil line needed to draw a border between the two entities.  They are adjacent, butt up to each other, share common roads and highways, etc, ad infinitum.

But hey these could be pretty good sized communities and still involve a significant distance between the two campuses?

Well the Louisville campus is just Northwest of a large regional mall, "Flatiron Crossing?"  The Broomfield campus? It's just Southeast of a regional mall called, "Flatiron Crossing."  Hmmm?

I think the biggest inconvenience this grand's worth of displaced "techies" will face? They may need to switch their Starbuck's location loyalty. They should still be able to lunch with their old colleagues at the Food Court.

Lost in small print in this story? Trading on the Nasdaq, Sun Microsystems was up a nickle.  

I'm not going to fight the excesses. Like it or not they are institutionalized and part of our evolution.  I may even participate in them at times. But I hope if I point them out once in a while we won't get so serious about everything.

BUT ONE DATE YOU MUST TAKE SERIOUSLY? THE ANNIVERSARY OF PaulsModestMusings. GET HOTEL RESERVATIONS NOW WHILE ROOMS ARE STILL AVAILABLE! THIS COULD TURN YOUR WHOLE LIFE AROUND. JUST 43 MORE DAYS!