A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes words with the picture add unintentional humor. Funny or Die user Oh, News! posts real examples from the news where the headlines add hilarity to a picture. Recently, Spokane’s own KREM 2 News was included in a great slideshow with this shot:

From Funny or Die's 12 Great Moments in News Caption

I get most of my news from NPR and the internet, while my husband prefers the TV. He cruises the twenty-four hour news channels. I get information overload from them because I can’t pay attention to both the scrolling captions and the story that’s being reported. In the end, I absorb neither and end up with a headache.  Maybe I should start looking for funny caption/picture combinations instead and forget about trying to keep up with current events. It seems like a more productive way to watch.

Here’s another unintentional match posted by Oh News!.

From Funny or Die's Finally, Fox News Accurately Labels Sara Palin.

What’s your favorite news source? How do you keep track of current events?

At first I wasn’t sure what to think of it: Keith Olbermann in a brown leather chair reading from what looked like a library copy of a James Thurber collection. At first I was skeptical. But then I sat down and listened, and I was impressed. I felt like I was witnessing a history-making event. Maybe I’m young and uninformed, but I’ve never seen a newscaster read literature on the air. Is this something that used to be done? I don’t know, but I have to say, I’m excited. We’ve talked a lot on Bark about why “people” (whoever these beings are) aren’t reading literature, or reading at all, and how to change that. We’ve also talked about trying to find creative ways to get our work out there, including using mixed media. So seeing Keith Olbermann reading short stories during his hour-long cable news show was kind of surreal. It was as though he’d been reading Bark and had taken on our cause, but no, his motivation was personal. See, his father just passed away, and during his final days, Keith read James Thurber to him. According to Olbermann, his father suggested that he read the stories on the air. It was a final wish of sorts, and so Keith did it, twice. The first time he read “A Peacelike Mongoose,” and the second time, the show I saw, he read “A Box to Hide In.” Both stories are really short and easy to follow; they’re kind of fable-like in their simplicity and morality, but more than anything they are good, thoughtful stories. And they were read for millions to hear right there on prime time cable TV. And Keith said he might keep doing it from time to time. How about that.

My tenure at Willow Springs will be up in June, when issue 66 hits the stands, and then I’ll have to pass the reins to my awesome assistant and find a new job. So, I’ve been looking into opportunities that involve writing. Going across different media involves various challenges. For example, how does one write for news? We all know that you keep it in iambic pentameter, and use human interest stories to get the viewer’s attention. I’ve been looking at structure lately, and found a couple excellent examples:

Of course, my fifth grade teacher always said, “You’ve got to answer the five W’s.” Where is the bullshit and who’s dealing with it? When the bullshit happen? Is the bullshit actually breaking news? Keep it current. Why is the bullshit happening and how are we dealing with the bullshit? What do authorities think of the bullshit?

That all sounds simple enough. And remember to write the bullshit in the old inverted pyramid: start with the most important facts about the bullshit and expand from there. Keep the bullshit objective. Don’t get flowery when talking about bullshit. Give your bullshit an angle.

If you’re writing bullshit for the television, images are super important. And yes, there’s a formula for selecting and filling in the video: