no news is good news

Two things...first, I promise to have a proper entry up in the next couple of days. Keep an eye out for that. Second, I felt compelled to comment on what I just saw on cnn.com. Here's a screenshot:
I was on the international site, to be fair, but I think I can still summarize these 14 articles succinctly: Some people died all over the world, more are in position to die, others narrowly avoided death, and a South African with a spell-check defying last name won the British Open.

By all accounts, keeping up with current events is a great way to stay informed and develop global perspective. But who honestly wants to read this? Some kids surviving a flood is a feel-good story, and seeing Tiger Woods fail does illicit a small nod to karmatic justice, but the overwhelming morbidity is just sickening. There are 7 billion lives and an infinite number of inhuman happenings to pull stories from at any given time. Is this the best that one of the world's largest news agencies can do?

As an addendum, I researched CNN a bit and discovered that they're in the midst of a ratings slump and actually losing their best, longest-standing anchors to competing agencies (see http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62I02R20100319). If they're looking for a way to turn it around, I think I may have a few suggestions.