You Know What They Want You To Know...

So my buddy from Argentina called me last week:
Him: "I heard New York City has been without power for the last 5 days."
Me: "No way. Not possible. Haven't heard anything about it up here."
Him: "Well, that's what my father-in-law read in the paper."
Me: "Your father-in-law is nuts. You told me that yourself. He's probably reading a paper from the 70's."
Him: "Maybe you're right."

Why was I so adamant that he was wrong? Because I am a news fanatic. I read the news constantly, especially cnn.com, foxnews.com, and news.google.com. I also sometimes read my local paper's website. None of them had alerted me to this rumor of NYC being without power for 5 days.

Then something weird happened. The next day, I visited the Houston Chronicle to look at their warehousing situation. In the waiting room, they had one of their papers. I picked it up. I read the first page. Then the second. Then I got to the third. It turns out that 100,000 people had been without power in NYC for 9 days! Look close, it is buried towards the end of the article.

This news about the greatest city in the US being without power for so long had been hidden from me for more than a week. I know more than I care to know about Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq, which are half a world away, but I don't find out about a major event that is happening 3 hours away. Something is wrong. I think that I am putting way too much reliance on internet news.