A "Black Friday" for decent journalism

I was going to compare the Star Trib (I couldn't find link but it's in the paper paper ) and Pi Press articles about Black Friday because, even before I looked, I knew there would be a ton of them. Along with fluff about the state fair, stories about this horrible shopping day are a tradition in place of real news. But then I looked at the Pi Press article and it just didn't seem adequate. It's just the typical story about shopping. It doesn't hold up at all to the ST's title, "A Kinder, Gentler Black Friday." First off, three reporters contributed to the story. This isn't all, remember the ST has a new direction. They also have an article all about SUI (Shopping while Under the Influence). I'm always amazed that the media hypes this horrific occasion so much, if it were any other destination that was busy and clogged they would deter people.

In any case. The premise of the main article is that this "Black Friday" isn't as crazy as previous ones have been. My favorite phrase in the lead is,"Reports of orderly gift-buying broke out all over the Twin Cities." The mixture of journalist-speak with such an inane topic strikes me as more gross than funny. Ok, I get it. This isn't a serious story. The reporters are having fun with it. The public wants to read about it. To tell you the truth I'm a little relieved that we didn't see the typical day-after-thanksgiving profile: Three generations of women who annually wake up at 3 am to go shopping together. Thanks Star Tribune.

The meat of this story is a discussion of how much tamer BF is this year. It touches on the economic problems like housing and jobs, but the experts they spoke to, managers and retail experts, veer away from this much more interesting topic. Instead it focuses on preparation of stores as the key to avoiding a mess. Too bad, the other story would have been more interesting.