Ph.D. Comics exists for the part in us that will always remember being college students, and will always remember writing research papers. And while very few of us will actually contemplate writing a thesis that will gain national media coverage, the comic to the left (click to enlarge) supplies us with an interesting take on what exactly warrants news to us media types.

Growing up, media coverage was an oft-complained-about subject in my household. My father pretty much banned local evening news from our TV (”what you don’t know…can kill you”). It’s the reason I still don’t know if eggs are good or bad for me, the reason we all are going to die of elbow cancer caused by the dye in our t-shirts, and the reason a fellow Arizona State graduate’s grandmother refused to travel to Tempe for the occasion (swine flu was breaking out in Mexico; she simply couldn’t risk it).

It’s also the reason I chose to get involved in the editorial side of print media. The comic demonstrates the sensationalism that most media outlets rely on to keep viewers/readers coming back, to raise ad revenue and to keep stockholders happy. While opinions are worthy of being heard in the media, the same tone of imminence and urgency shouldn’t be applied to every piece of news we come across.

Even so, I can’t wait for the next slow summer news cycle to bring more unnecessary mass panic for my entertainment purposes. (Please, please, please let it be related to the zombie apocalypse and not something lame like a diet craze!)

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