SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

THE NEW NEWS INDUSTRY – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:   Over just the last year, Americans have radically changed their media consuming habits, abandoning TV news in favor of online sources, a trend that could have the internet as the nation's No. 1 news provider in a year.  The latest Pew Research Center review of news consumption that showed a 19-point gap between TV news and online shrunk to just 7 points in the last year. Those "often" getting news from TV dropped from 57 percent last year to 50 percent this year, while online grew from 38 percent to 43 percent."  The decline in television news use occurs across all three types of TV news asked about in the survey – local, network and cable – but is greatest for local television news," said Pew.  TV is already losing to online for everybody younger than 50.  Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the perception that TV news is heavily slanted in one direction.  Nah, that couldn't be.

THE NEW FAD – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:   Each morning in Paris, Michael (who requested a pseudonym because of privacy concerns), his wife and their 10-year-old son would stroll out of the Hotel George V, where suites can go for $5,000 a night, to meet their personal security detail: two strapping ex-military men who cost $2,000 a day.  “I’m not a worrywart,” said the 38-year-old, who runs a lending fund. “But once you start having kids, [you want] peace of mind against terrorism.”  Wealthy New Yorkers are increasingly turning to hard bodies to protect them during European vacations, particularly in cities such as London, Paris and Berlin that have been hit with high-profile terrorism, say security experts.  “I can’t fill them fast enough,” said CASS Global Security founder Shawn Engbrecht of requests for vacation bodyguards.  Rich people are hiring bodyguards to go to Disney World.  I'm sure this will become a social requirement in certain circles.  What, he has no bodyguard?  How important could he possibly be?

HEY, SOME MORE GOOD NEWS – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   For a city that seems to move at the speed of light, being late is never a good thing. That’s true for budget agreements, that’s true for commuter trains, and as it turns out, it’s probably true for earthquakes as well.  We tend to think of seismic activity as a west coast problem. Friday demonstrated all too well what a magnitude 8.2 earthquake can do to Mexico and Central America; many of us remember the World Series quake that rocked the San Francisco area in 1989. But New York, which is actually riddled with faults, has a long history of earthquakes: On average, the region has witnessed a moderate quake (about a 5.0 on the Richter scale) every hundred years. The last one was in 1884. Seismologists say we can expect the next one any day now.  Schedule it right after the next hurricane.

September 9,  2017