Larry Star: "ebay wedding dress guy"

Local reporters all over the world employ the same house style for writing about the Internet. It involves artificial wide-eyed naivete, a tone that randomly writhes from shock to confusion and a missionary zeal to be the first person to expose the Internet for the nasty, unregulated place it is.

A standard story opens "The Internet is like a television, with a telephone in it. Local residents have been shocked to discover that it's not like a normal television, but full of scary paedophiles and people who rarely go to church. In fact, prisoners can make your children take drugs, by encouraging them to lick the screens. Your fearless reporter investigates..."

So, in this great tradition, possibily on one of the slowest news days in the history of the Seattle Times, reporter Nicole Brodeur was sent to dig up some news about the "ebay wedding dress guy", Larry Star, covered here and just about everywhere else on the Internet.

But Brodeur didn't write a small, local, human interest piece. She had a front page scoop. Her findings were shocking:

NOT EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET TELLS THE TRUTH!
PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOU LAUGH AREN"T ALWAYS NICE PEOPLE!

Pulitzer prize winning stuff. In the middle of the interview, Star says "You're digging?" with what appears to be slack jawed amazement. Little did he realise that Brodeur had a deadline and just 25 minutes to crank out the pointless non-story. Perhaps she should just give up and start a blog.