Peoria Illinoisan

In the news today (12/8/06) was a 22 year old guy who was arrested by the feds for apparently wanting to explode hand grenades in an act of “violent jihad” at the Cherry Vale Mall in Rockford.

I give all the praise in the world to the viligence of those who captured this creep, but that’s not the point of my post.

The first report I read mentioned “Chicago Area” which made me wonder how many national reports would turn this into a “Chicago” Mall. I’ve travelled enough to know that to an outsider, Peoria counts as Chicago to many, as does all of Illinois. How many times have you answered the question “How far are you from Chicago?”

But, I expect more from our local news…

At 5:00, WMBD1470’s Shaun Newell reported the story in the “Chicago Area”. I happened to hear the 5:30 broadcast, which was better, but he was still reading the AP report verbatim again; this time stating “Rockford, a city 80 miles NorthWest of Chicago.”

I know where Rockford is. I think everyone around here knows where Rockford is. I’d bet more people know where Rockford is than they do Lewistown, Bradford or Lacon, yet they never say, “In Lacon, 20 miles north of Peoria, blah blah happened today…” (not that there’s much news coming out of Lacon, but you get my point)

Ok, this bugs me more that it probably should; I like Shaun Newell, as I do most of the WMBD radio personalities, but can’t the “news guy” on the radio adlib a little and realize that we all know where Rockford is?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.