1. Actress Winona Ryder has been charged with shop lifting.

2. It's shark week on the Discovery Channel.

3. The world consists of America and Iraq.

4. President Bush is still an idiot.

5. The Rolling Stones are on tour.



This is news? Who, outside of Winona Ryder and a small group of people, could possibly care about what Winona Ryder stole? How does knowing what Winona Ryder stole affect me, the economy, the weather, politics, health, science or anything for that matter? Really, who cares? The world is too big and there's too much shit going on every day for CNN to spend one minute covering this trivial, irrelevant, celebrity bullshit. When is the last time you heard about something going on in Mexico that didn't involve a holiday? When is the last time you heard news from Brazil, Australia or the UK? You don't think shit happens in these parts of the world? What happened to in-depth coverage abroad? What happened to news that didn't hold punches?

I wish I were exaggerating.

I can't stand how CNN has changed. It used to be that CNN was the place to go for decent coverage of world news. Now they try to cram as much shit down our throats as possible in hopes of increasing ratings. Just look at the layout of CNN's Headline News. I guess someone forgot to tell their design department that it's not supposed to be a web page. On the left they have a giant static image taking up 30% of the screen. It usually displays a huge graphic or "fact" about the story that could be summarized with an additional spoken sentence by the reporter. The bottom rectangle displays scrolling news bites and a half-assed weather report (displaying two cities at a time so that the probability of your living in any of the cities listed is next to nothing). What I don't understand is why they repeat the news so often if they supposedly have so much news to report that it's necessary to scroll additional news across the bottom.

I subscribe to an email service from CNN called "CNN Breaking News." Basically every time shit hits the fan, you're supposed to receive an email. Most of the "breaking news" I've received has been as earth shattering as an actor arrested for drunk driving. Wow, now excuse me while I change my freshly soiled boxers.

FOX News, MSNBC and local news isn't any better. Local news in Utah has a segment called "world in a minute." It's literally a 60 second recap of everything that happened IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Yes, 60 seconds. Of course, there's no time to cover the world when you have important news to cover like the local high school wrestling match.