News Free Zone?

I'm beginning to think that I live in a news oasis, that nothing of significance ever happens here in Crapchester.  I know that a lot of people in the provinces probably feel that way - the London bias of the national media frequently gives the impression that even major population centres like Birmingham or Manchester are mere rural backwaters in terms of newsworthy events.  Obviously, you'd expect local press outlets to balance this sort of media misrepresentation.  The Crapchester Chronicle, our local newspaper, however, seems determined to reinforce the idea that nothing at all ever happens here.  Now, I have to be honest here, I'm making my judgements based not upon a reading of the physical newspaper, but rather its website.  That said, you'd expect a local paper's website to feature, at the very least, the highlights of the print edition, so as to encourage people to buy it.  In which case, Crapchester is even crapper than I feared.  Before Christmas, for instance, the best story it could come up with was one of monkey abuse.  That's right, monkey abuse.  Apparently, a local resident had been up in court for being cruel to his pet monkey.  He'd kept in a cage too small for it and had forced to walk, on a lead, to his local pub.

Now, my regular reader(s) will know my attitude toward monkeys and won't be surprised that my initial attitude to the story was that the monkey had undoubtedly got its just desserts.  The little bastard.  But beyond that, I was amazed that this was a headline story - it even featured on those posters local papers have in the windows of newsagents, showing their current top headline.  The other thing which occurred to me was that anyone in the pub in question had thought the sight of a monkey on a leash in the lounge bar was at all unusual - if all the stories about the amount of crack that gets smoked there.  Getting back to the paper, post-Christmas, things haven't improved.  Highlights have included, two women seen fighting outside a local school, on a Sunday, so it wasn't even witnessed by the children, and a car gets stuck in flood under a railway bridge - complete with a photo!  Right now the top story concerns plans to restore a BMX track being put on hold.  Surely there must be more than this going on locally?  Whilst I'd like to believe that it is only the Crapchester Chronicle which is so bereft of news, a quick look at the website of my hometown's local paper (owned by the same media group, incidentally) revealed the same kind of trivia passing for local news.  Is it any wonder that local newspaper circulations are in decline?