Headlines that warm your alumnus heart

Sidebar: Wondering about the legalities of a mandatory survey triggering letters home. Maybe we’re off base on that?

Backtracking on a similar 2005 study, researches said that men can, in fact, like other dudes and women, too. While modern science is catching up to some groundbreaking last-century theory, it’s pleasing to know journalists remain as innuendo-filled as ever. Cue the close of the NYT article.

“Sexual arousal is a very complicated thing,” she said. “The real phenomenon in day-to-day life is extraordinarily messy and multifactorial.”

Heard.

The article gives more detail on the study’s methodology, if you’re so inclined.

Not making this up – it’s really called newshole.

PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,000 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on “newshole,” or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV.

The topic beat out other stories for the week, including the economy, Middle East unrest and the 2012 election GOP pregaming:

Coverage of the presidential campaign dropped last week, filling 8% of the newshole compared with 12% the previous week. Last week’s coverage included former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s entry into the GOP field and the mass defections of staffers from Newt Gingrich’s troubled campaign.

The index is part of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. PEJ said Weiner is the fourth-most covered – err, uncovered? – erected elected official story since measurements began in 2007.

Measurement of the news, perverts.

Whoops! Just an oversight. I’m sure there’s nothing else questionable! Just to be sure, let’s check the story’s lead:

The closet door became unhinged lately when a number of gay men in sports decided to turn the knob and hold a public liberation.

Maybe it’s time to retire literary uses of the closet metaphor.

Outed in the interview, he reviews a couple awkward and painful moments (hearing “Can you hear me now?” as his grandmother was lowered into her grave) in the course of his nearly 10-year stint as the face of “the network.”

Equally disgusting, he discloses an incident where the fear of bad PR silenced a voice known for being heard loud and clear:

Then there were the drive-bys. Marcarelli has a home in Guilford, Connecticut, and five summers ago, kids in an SUV began driving past at night, yelling, “Can you hear me now?” Later, says Marcarelli, “they started screaming ‘faggot’ up at my house. It got progressively more profane as the years went by.” One night, it happened while some friends were over, and he decided to call the police. “As soon as I hung up the phone,” he says, “I realized that in order for them to do anything about it, it would have to become a report that would go into a police log.” Worried about the publicity—and the questions that might ensue if it came out that the actor playing Test Man was gay—he declined to file a report.

Via Gawker

A Indiana Department of Transportation study suggests closing cross-traffic on Allisonville for seven months to expedite construction, indystar.com reports.

The closure will give way to the ultimate solution, a DNA-looking traffic flow known as a “single-point urban interchange.” See the Star’s rendering here.

The text detonated a vest bomb warn by the bomber while inside a safe hours, mere hours before the planned attack, The Leader-Post said.

[via Threat Level / Wired.com]

The the fake news hosts’ remarkable talent rivals their major network counterparts. Their interaction with NBC’s “Today” show crew provides all the proof (and laughter) you need to back that statement. [via HuffPost]