Dude. Natalee Holloway.

Marshall McLuhan said it best: The medium is the message. You have an email alert from a local news station about a white woman in peril. Let's break that down:

- Email marketing is far and away the most effective as far as click-through and attention. 80% of direct email messages are opened and 60% are read. This is why "spam" has such a hold over us - we're prisoner to it 'cuz we just can't not open it. That said, you aren't opening an email from an outfit that sends you news. You're opening an email from a broadcast station that wants you to turn on the television.

- Broadcast television is a dinosaur. I read a formative article back in 2008 that remarked on CBS, the youngest-skewing network on television, finally having the median age of its prime-time viewers cross the 50-YO mark. Elaborating: the median age of broadcast television viewers, of all networks, was 50-plus. Furthermore, the article observed that the median age of all television viewers was increasing by one year, every year, and had since 2000. Effectively, young viewers were not replacing old viewers when they died. That was 2008. Extrapolating, the median age of CBS viewers is now 57. That would put the median age of Fox viewers at 82, but I'll bet it started asymptotically approaching 78 'cuz old people die.

- Everybody loves a white woman in peril, particularly old white people who watch broadcast television. Me? I'm discouraged by the amount of coverage two escaped murderers are getting but I know why - it's an easy story with no requirements for boots-on-ground that has zero controversy and all the dramatic elements of a car chase or ticking bomb Hollywood scenario. Doesn't mean it's news.

The Fairness Doctrine has been dead for five years. Local stations are no longer required to justify their bandwidth through the public good, they just need viewers. The most effective way to gain viewers is to stuff your inbox with clickbait so that you'll go watch something breathless and vapid that can be assembled entirely within the studio from wire reports and stock footage. The medium is the message - clickbait for old women is news.

Reclaim your inbox. Unsub from everything. Me? I get my news from The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet, not because I think it's good coverage but because I know they'll give me a good overview of the meaninglessness everyone else is fixated on without me requiring to read more than a summary. Actual news? Yeah, you'll have to hunt that out. And again, the medium is the message: the truth is out there, but it's subject to perspective and prospecting.