NPR Rocks

It's rather amazing how much interesting news comes out of NPR. When you compare it to nightly news, or even to PBS or CNN, it far outshines them. For me, it has less to do with the timeliness of the news or the depth of its analysis. It has to do with their ability to spot trends or pick good human interest stories.

For example, I remember a few years ago, they were talking about this British game show called The Weakest Link and describing how that worked, and how it was likely to come to the states. Indeed it did, and indeed it's since faded.

Or I remember a segment about the Promisekeepers. Remember that? Kind of a Christian version of the million man march. You know, how fathers need to reaffirm their responsibilities to their families. Anyway, one of the stories NPR told was about a gay man whose brother was a religious Christian, and part of the Promisekeepers. He had been invited to attend because this meant a lot to his brother. He thought it was rather touching because his brother wanted to show him something of his world, and he wanted to reciprocate on the idea.

Or even something as simple as the Charlotte Hornets moving to New Orleans. Here's a situation that was reported on by the media, but it wasn't clear why they were moving. It turns out that Charlotte had been eager to have an NBA team, and early on, had very rabid fans. But due to some indiscretions by the owners (an affair?) which turned people off, they stopped showing up, and the team started to lose money, and eventually moved. Now, that's detail that a news organization ought to have but didn't.

There are two trends I heard about on the way to work. There's discount real estate where you meet an agent online, and pay far less than you normally do to sell your own house.

There's also the trend to drinking less beer and wine, but an increase in hard liquors and the corresonding rise of so-called micro distilleries, often started by the same folks who did microbreweries.

Now that's interesting stuff to me and just the kind of news you don't hear about. I once heard a long segment about older people selling their houses and buying RVs and driving around the country. The next time I heard anything like this again was in the Simpsons where they made a brief reference to it (Milhouse's granddad had bought an RV).

This is the kind of trend you want to hear about, and why NPR rocks!