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"The bogusity of the New York Times' story about how technology leads more park visitors into trouble."

Nice takedown by Jack Shafer. (But isn't the correct spelling "bogosity"? Try saying it. I know the adjective is "bogus," but people don't say "bogusity." They might say "bogusness," but not "bogusity.")

Anyway, the problem is something that's common to journalism about trends (including that ridiculous Daily Caller piece about blog payola). A headline declaring a trend gets readers' attention, but then you need a lot of examples of the things that constitute the trend. The writer has some things that look like a trend, but he's got to beef up the article with more examples or it's not a trend. But he's itching to get to trend!!!! so he includes things that don't really fit, and then the whole thing looks stupid.

It's really annoying for the reader, because the trend!!!! declaration worked, and you've already read it and rewarded the website with traffic before you realize it's not quite a trend. What can you do? Resolve not to read trend pieces anymore? But then you still see the headline and it makes the impression that there is a trend!!!! and now you're been deprived of the evidence that there isn't a trend.

Now, I'm reading the comments at the Shafer piece and see that some of his readers are pouncing on the "bogusity/bogosity" spelling issue. I'm glad to see that others share my priorities. There's also this from one "nerdnam":

Well, what's her name's plastic surgeon just died after driving off a cliff immediately after twittering a picture of his dog at the beach. The dog survived, luckily. So I see a trend here.

Oh?! "Heidi Montag Mourns Death of Her Plastic Surgeon." Oh, lord, look at the expression on her face! Isn't it ironic? You plastic-surgerize ? what's the verb for "surgery"? ? somebody's face and then you die and her face is incapable of looking convincingly sad. Her gigantic breasts don't look sad either, but they make it into the People Magazine photograph, and because they stand as monuments to your work, that's not ironic at all.

Hmm. That People article no longer contains the information about tweeting that is referred to here:

According to People, Dr. Frank Ryan's jeep Wrangler careened off of the Pacific Coast Highway on Monday....

People later reported that Ryan's former girlfriend confirmed that his accident was caused by texting and driving. He had posted a Twitter message about hiking with his dog just before the accident. The dog survived the crash.

One more dubiously technology-related death. Maybe confirmations from former girlfriends don't cut it anymore.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 24, 2010 (boomark / email).