Kaitlin Welborn | Recession overload

Hey, did you know that Barack Obama and fam have a new super-duper-adorable dog?! He's a cute, fuzzy-wuzzy Portuguese Water Dog given to the First Family by Senator Ted Kennedy. His name is Bo and he is so cute! And did I mention that he's now usurped Suri Cruise for the media's prize of "OMG Cutest Thing Ever!!!!"?

Of course you knew that Malia and Sasha finally got the promised pup, the same way you knew that the video of Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent has received 17 gazillion hits on YouTube and the same way you knew that Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson are dunzo. You read about them on blogs and Twitter feeds and in newspapers and e-mails.

It should be somewhat surprising that we are interested in Portuguese Water Dogs when people are losing their jobs all the time, or that we care that SamLo or LiRon (or whatever their annoying celebrity-couple nickname was) broke up when there is - cue ominous music - The Recession going on.

Some might say that the need for escapism explains the prevalence of positive news stories. It's common knowledge that people like to watch, read and listen to happy things when times are rough. For instance, Hollywood produced more musicals and comedies than dramas during the Great Depression.

But are we escaping from the recession itself or just the media's constant and pervasive coverage of it?

Personally, I think it's got something to do with a backlash. We're looking to escape the media's ceaseless reporting on the economy by turning to the gossipy, the inspiring, the adorable, and we're terming them serious news. "Susan Boyle" and "Obama dog" are the first and third most popular searches, respectively, on the New York Times' Web site, ranked above articles about the economy. In the times of Twitter and Facebook, when people want pure escapism they can go to cuteoverload.com or watch some mindless banter on a staged "reality" TV show on MTV, not read the Times. So even when people are looking for "serious" news stories, they gravitate toward ones that have nothing to do with the recession.

People would rather read about Bo or Susan or Simon because stories about the recession are constantly shoved in our faces 24/7. In my completely unscientific poll of the Times from last week, there was at least one front-page story that mentioned the credit crisis in some way. In fact, 20 percent of the front-page news talked about the recession. This makes sense given the press mantra "Bad news sells papers." But is the recession really one fifth of our news? Either we've suddenly got less news to cover or the recession is subtly seeping into more and more articles.

The recession penetrates beyond the business section and the business-skewed front page. It pops up in stories that otherwise would have little to no economic lens: whether or not Confessions of a Shopaholic is an appropriate movie given the economy, where to go on vacation using only your tax refund and how to stop the zoo in Germany from killing Knut the polar bear and feeding him to the lions because they can't afford to keep him anymore (rumor, but it was a story.)

I understand that the recession is a big deal and that it's hurting millions of families (including mine). It's a shame that the internship with Lehman Brothers isn't going to work out and that we can no longer invest money in Iceland. But is it necessary to mention the recession in every single article, no matter how seemingly unrelated? The media moved from relevancy to flippancy when it started using the term "recessionista" seriously.

The media (the DP included) needs to seriously think about how they treat the recession. What is reported legitimately and ethically, and what is being manufactured because we think people will read it if it's about the recession?

Personally, I'd rather read about Bo the First Dog than about how the recession leads to more reality TV programming. Not because I don't want to read something depressing, but because I want to read something different than every other story on the front page.

Kaitlin Welborn is a College senior from Tampa, Fla. Not Your Mother's Daughter appears on alternating Wednesday. Her email address is welborn@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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