Alan Gutierrez

The tragedy of the massacre at Virginia Tech, it feels like I must acknowledge it in my writing, in a post, but I don’t want to.

I don’t want to, because I have nothing to add. At the core of it, the loss of so many, very young lives. It is miserable.

I want to write about it, though, because I was unaware of what happened for most of the day.

We had a spate of pointless news, Anna Nicole Smith, the Imus Scandal (don’t know his first name), and the presidential pageant. I began to make a point of tuning out the 24 hour news cycle. It’s not real journalism. They don’t investigate or ask questions. They just watch.

I don’t look at CNN for headlines any longer, because they dredge up some horrible tales of misfortune. It is outrage based journalism.

Like the boy who cried wolf, they managed to keep me uninformed of the massacre until the day was over, until I was reading about it over someone else’s shoulder.

And now, the details that will emerge, as the did after Columbine, as the plow the depths of indecency down to stills from the security videos of the murders in Time Magazine. We’ll be outraged and outraged and outraged, and there will be no changes.

How can we turn to the same conduit for news that so recently broadcast 24 hours of Anna Nicole Smith? When will the outrage be directed at the purveyors of outrage?

Why do I bother to write about it? Why would I write about it when I have nothing to add? I don’t want to be like them.

There is much for me to write, but I know that I have nothing to add.