Good morning.

It's my first Saturday off with the new job - and I am headed to my hometown for our annual "Founder's Day" town fair. I'll be sitting at the William Sutton Lodge booth today, trying to indoctrinate fine young men into the fraternity.


But before I head out, I will of course be scanning the local news headlines with increasing disappointment. Oh, not because of the content - that's always depressing - but because of the way it's being presented.

Remember when you could find actual "breaking" news? I could turn on local WBZ 1030am radio, or click on WCVB TV and usually see what was going on in a few minutes. After the internets came, WCVB had a pretty slick website, too.

But over time, I've discovered an alarming trend. There simply isn't any "breaking news" or "Top stories" anymore.

Go and click on your local website. Does it look an awful lot like this one? For more than a year, I've been noticing that many news stations around the country use this exact format. WCVB is owned by Hearst Media, with 33 stations, so of course they bought a product "off the shelf" that would suffice for them all.

If you scroll down, you'll find the regular news feed, but it often remains static for hours or even days at a time. The main story at the top is sometimes unchanged for 2 or 3 days. While this website doesn't label it, I would presume that the news feed is based on the number of clicks, instead of relevance.

A competing news station locally, NECN (New England Cable News) is far more blatant. Their website clearly labels their feeds as "Trending" and "Most Read". What this means is celebrity news and puff pieces dominate the coverage online at what should be a real news station. This is why the ridiculous Karen Read trial, which I'm sure you heard about, dominated the local news cycle for the last six months.

So where does one go for 'real' news these days? Curiously - it's print media. I have been a subscriber of the Boston Globe for aeons. It was just to get the Sunday Globe for years, but the subscription includes global access to their website. I used to not read the paper for the news, because actual print news is 12-24 hours old by the time it lands on my doorstep. But the website is pretty slick, and of course all the traditional newspaper things are all present, albeit in digital form.

Alas though, for news that truly matters, my sources are not American. You know of my longtime loyalty to the BBC, but I'll also include the Guardian in that equation. For the Middle East, love them or hate them, Al Jazeera plays it pretty straight. On rare occasions I look in on Boston's own vaunted Christian Science Monitor.

But I think this all contributes to our continued dumbing down. This was perhaps revealed most dramatically in the wake of the debate last week. There was plenty of real news generated - but within moments of finishing, a popular entertainer endorsed Vice President Harris, so any "news" website based on the trending or most popular algorithm was instantly overwhelmed by what should have been a puff piece.

How's the news sources in your part of the world?