More ghost news from the Arizona Republic
Two weeks ago, it was a haunted library.
Today it’s a haunted hotel in Douglas:
It doesn’t have to be Halloween for ghost stories at the Gadsden. Employees and guests have reported eerie tales all times of the year. There are so many stories that the issue is met with a shrug. Employees don’t seem upset that their workplace is haunted. The ghosts apparently are frisky, not nasty.
“They’re nice,” said Brenda Maley, the assistant manager who’s worked at the hotel for 32 years. “I think they’re happy here.”
These stories join the Republic’s hard-hitting psychics coverage.
In the haunted library story, the reporter mentioned a group called “Sonoran Paranormal Investigations Inc.” This group’s web site says that its work is based on “true scientific inquiry and stringent analysis.”
This story has a whole other paranormal investigation group to call on, called the “Phoenix Arizona Paranormal Society.” This group boasts of its use of “modern techniques and documented evidence aquired during investigations”—and of its “years of paranormal experience both personal and investigative.”
Both sound like reliable sources for newspaper articles.
A representative of the Phoenix Arizona Paranormal Society is called in to attest to the hauntedness of the hotel:
Count in Rod Franklin, a computer technician and founder of the Phoenix Arizona Paranormal Society, as a believer. His group tries to help people get rid of unwanted spirits.
“There are a lot of people who don’t take it seriously, but they’ve never had an encounter,” he said.
It’s hard to argue with that logic!
11:14 AM
And just when you thought the Arizona Republic couldn't get any weirder...
… it runs a story about a haunted library.
This is the paper’s evidence:
“I’ve had books fly at me, so I’ve seen it. I mean, you’re just standing there. You just say, ‘OK, it’s because I walked by.’ You always justify what it is,” librarian Colleen Gorman said.
Does any of that make sense? If the librarian saw a book flying around, shouldn’t the reporter ask when it happened and if anyone else saw it?
Or if, besides being incoherent, she’s just nuts or a big liar, shouldn’t she be kept away from kids?
The rest of the story descends into the parodic; there’s a lot of scenes of some alleged paranormal investigator looking at lights flashing on an “electromagnetic-field meter” like some bumpkin version of Dan Ackroyd in Ghostbusters—except Dan Ackroyd didn’t have a newspaper reporter following him around and hanging on his every word.
Or a daily newspaper editor willing to print it.
The Republic, as we’ve seen, likes paranormal stories almost as much as it likes dog stories.
In March the paper ran a story about how psychics were getting more popular. That’s what the hedline said, anyway: The actual story offered no evidence of it.
And last year the paper ran a similar story.
News not so much.
7:46 AM
Just when you thought the Arizona Republic couldn't get any worser!
Today it publishes a feature—complete with massive photo—on the cover of its business section about …
… Starbucks using a new cup size.
A. New. Cup. Size.
That’s what warrants a cover feature at the Arizona Republic.
As usual, the story itself is correspondingly insipid. Here’s the lede:
Phoenix-area coffee junkies who have grown immune to Starbucks’ maximum 24-ounce jolt now can boost their caffeine intake by 30 percent without loading up on extra shots.
The Seattle-based coffeehouse chain is test-marketing a new 31-ounce cup for iced coffees and teas in Phoenix and Tampa to determine whether customers are ready to supersize their caffeine.
For what is essentially ad copy for a corporation, it’s mighty fine prose. A graf later, looking for a little color to brighten up the story, reporter Max Jarman intrepidly finds a customer drinking from one of the new cups.
Turns out he was drinking decaffeinated ice tea.
Jarman doesn’t say what the drinks will cost, nor does he mention the nutritional issues. Extrapolating from info on Starbucks’ own nutrition pages, you can see that a 31-ounce Frappuccino will contain about 600 calories, and more than 100 grams of carbs.
As for the illustration, it’s a big picture of a coffee cup with a big ol’ Starbucks logo on the side. Some drawings to the right of the photo are a great example of the expository journalism a newspaper can provide its audience with, given some planning and just a tiny bit of creativity.
I think anyone looking at the result will immediately apprehend that a 31-ounce cup is bigger than a 24-ounce cup.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday over in the Living section, the paper has continued its fascination with psychics.
The hedline of the story is this:
Psychics see their popularity rising
Medium’s popularity a sign of public’s growing fascination with the other side
I suppose its relevant to mention that the story is about no such thing. It quotes one alleged psychic saying she was busy, but she never says she has more business than normal, and no one else does, either. (Indeed, she’s the only purported psychic quoted.)
The story does more than you’d expect by quoting a psychic debunker, but then, in an almost parodic descent into a rabit hole of journalistic over-objectivity, finds someone to quarrel with the debunker!
But Richard Mann, a professor emeritus of psychology and religion at the University of Michigan, says people have always expressed a connection with the dead….
Worst of all, the story is a wire piece from Detroit. It’s just amazing to think that an editor at the paper decided that of all the wire stories available that day, the crappy one about the psychics was the one to run.
Previously in PHXated:
5:49 PM
Do psychics have PR agents?
It sure seems like it. Hard to believe a big-city newspaper would be receptive to a pitch from the tarot-card industry to drum up some business—but it’s even harder to contemplate a paper coming up with this story on its own:
When the going gets tough, Valley residents apparently go in search of the metaphysical.
Local psychics and astrologers say that while they’re seeing some decline in business as longtime clients cut back on discretionary spending, the recession is bringing them many new customers.
I missed this gem in the paper; it was brought to my attention by the blog Mediactive, overseen by ASU j school prof Dan Gillmor. Says he:
No newspaper, as far as I know, gives its pages over to self-described psychics. Yet the Republic’s story quotes several, along with the astrologers, with a straight face.
It even provides a helpful sidebar explaining the difference between psychics, astrologers, fortune-tellers and mediums (in each case with the same level of “here’s what they say, never mind what science says” logic). For example, we learn that a psychic is “sensitive to non-physical or supernatural forces and influences, able to see into the future and into the events in a person’s life. Often uses tools such as tarot cards, crystals or tea leaves.” Gosh, thanks the the deeper insight.
12:00 AM