So frustrated with the media

I've had cnn.com as the page that opens with my browser (and grab headlines from).

I've been frustrated with cnn.com for a while. About half the news stories are these inane "human interest" stories. I didn't mind that so much, but when they ignore real news for it - I get frustrated.

In early April, Eddie Robinson - the famed football coach from Grambling University. While he was coaching, his teams earned 408 wins and sent 200 players to the NFL. This accomplishment was in the same class with Joe Paterno and Bear Bryant. But, his was almost more impressive he began as the coach of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) during segregation with almost no assistant coachs, minimal budgets, and the inability to stop at a restaurant on the drive home from a game to get the team dinner.

I was in Louisiana when this happened. I tried to find news stories on the internet and found that most of the web based news sites had buried the story. The "other story" block on the cnn.com website included "dog found after 4 years and 1,000 miles away" and "bride gets plastic surgery after accident."

I tried to figure out why the story was deemed by the media as being so unimportant. Was it because he was a football coach? at a HBCU? African American?

Yesterday I watched with horror as the tragedy at Virginia Tech unfolded. I grew up in the DC area, spent 10 years working in Virginia, knew many people who had graduated from Tech. My DH went to grad school at University of Virginia. I went to James Madison. These schools are only a few hours from VT (UVa and VT are arch rivals, of sorts). For a while, my brother attended VT deciding not to return only this past fall. I work at a University.

I found out about what was happening in Virginia when I clicked my browser and was connected to cnn.com. As I read the links about the story, I saw that they had a link for readers to send their pictures from the VT tragedy. I was also told that msnbc.com and foxnews.com had a similar link. Today, CNN.com and foxnews.com have links to view such pictures. msnbc.com has photos, but I'm not sure if they are reader photos are not.

I'm pretty certain that I don't want to keep cnn.com as my homepage on my browser. What they call news used to be items for the National Enquirer.

Any suggestions for where I can go on the web to find the national and international news without sensationalism?

I've started to wonder if I should just give up on the media? I'm ready to give up on human nature's voyeuristic nature that has driven the media to battle for readers/viewers by offering the most sensationalistic news and photos. When did we become more interested in seeing body's being carried off than with just knowing it happened. Do the photos make it more real? More tragic? More preventable in the future?

*shakes head*