Some days are a slow news day and you have to dig very deep to find a top story (for) the website.
Tuesday appears to be one of those days at The Oakland Press website.
The top headline: Volunteers work to make 1,200 apple pies for annual Waterford fundraiser.
The story goes like this:
A whole lotta pie-making is going on at the Waterford Recreation Center this week.
Every day, 56 volunteers are peeling, chopping, assembling and baking pies in four big ovens.
The end result will be 1,200 pies baked and then sold — and thousands raised for the Golden Age Club with the 14th-annual apple pie sale.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said Alice Winslow, a 69-year-old Waterford resident.
Another online publication, Detroit Buzz, tweeted about The Oakland Press piece: “How Slow of A News Day Is it in Oakland County? Pies Are the Top Story.”
The Oakland Press, based in Pontiac, is part of the Digital First Media newspaper chain (formerly Journal Register Company) which has decimated the newsroom ranks through a series of layoffs at its three main papers in southeast Michigan: The OP, The Macomb Daily and The (Royal Oak) Daily Tribune.
As a result, all three suburban papers have routinely made summer parades, festivals and community events their top story of the day in recent months, typically publishing them at the top of the front page with a big, bold headline and a large photo.
I hate to say it, but readers would be better off if those three newspapers were merged into one.
And here I thought they were poking fun at my former employer, The Observer & Eccentric Newspapers, which used to be (and maybe still is) famous for fluff on the front page.