If it was possible to be more disgusted with Morgantown’s pathetic idea of journalism, WDTV has heroically and bravely decided to cover the following important situation:

Morgantown Sports Bar Offers Great Atmosphere and Every NFL Game

Got that? There’s a bar. And it has televisions. That’s the entire situation. I won’t deign to call it a “story” because it plainly isn’t one. It’s a reporter returning a favor. Whether his meal was comped or the bar advertises on his employers television station, the only reason that something like this gets published is because somebody’s benefitting from it.

Not benefitting from it, in case you were wondering, is Morgantown’s local community, a place that could use real journalists doing real journalism. I recognize though that such an idea is anathema. 

But even if we accept that this bar’s existence counts as “news,” why do we have to get such a mind-numbingly stupid story out of it? The reporter clearly went into the place and interviewed three people: the place’s owner, and the first two yahoos he ran into after talking to the owner. 

Lest anybody think that WDTV’s the only group guilty of such nonsense, here’s my old stomping grounds doing precisely the same thing with Mario’s Fishbowl, which got friendly front-page coverage as a result of opening a new location (and advertising with the DA.) 

I get it: doing real journalism is hard. You have to call people. You have to write down what they say. You have to turn what they say into a coherent article that is sometimes as long as 500 words (and sometimes even longer). But it can be done.