Miles from a point.

It was funny -- to us.
To the readers -- a collective turning of the page.

 

I'm of the opinion that readers will read anything about anything so long as it is either informative or entertaining. We can debate whether this qualifies, certainly.

To me, it reminded me of something Dave Barry would write. Which is fine.

 

No one made a Paris joke with the fastball hanging over the plate?

 

But Moddy, there's a Fairfield in Christiansburg that's what, maybe 5 miles away?

 

Marriott's program sucks anyway. Starwood, on the other hand, is awesome, baby!

 

Screw Starwood.
Marriott kicks ass! I have a VIP card! woo hoo!

 

Once again, I agree with you. I've got a wife and you've got a man, but if we met, I think we could be like ... buddies, or something similarly safe.
Seriously, why should readers care about us? They just want to know about the people and teams we cover.
I even had a coach try to get out of answering one of my questions by saying"what do you think?" To which I replied, "my readers don't care what I think. They care what you think." He laughed and answered the question.

 

I'm gonna mildly disagree. I think readers like the occasional, very occasional, peek into the reporters' side of the business. I've always found many of them to be curious about how we do our jobs, what life on the road is like, etc. The thing they don't want is to hear us complain about how tough our jobs are, or how so-and-so won't talk to us, which is understandable.

 

The Mariott thing was an inside joke, but I think readers will get the point of: "Writers will be coming into our city, experiencing little in it and critiquing it. You should disregard these critiques."

It's a problem that stems from when reporters are expected to produce a blog or column at events such as the NCAA Regionals that let readers know what the city's like and how the atmosphere is around town.

But because the reporter's there to cover games, he or she barely has time to exprience the city's best attributes and ends up writing about the weather and/or taking a cheap shot at what the city is most famous for (in this case, cars and violence) to get a few laughs.