First, from the NYT yesterday, in a story looking at how Halo is being used to get teens to church.
“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”
Wow, the reporter who heard that one (take a bow, Matt Richtel!) had to have known he hit the motherlode of quotes, and one that perfectly summed up the conflict in the story.
Then, check out this headscratcher of a lede from the Journal:
Nancy Camarota, a customer-relations executive at Allied Waste Industries Inc., said she thought it was odd when a Deloitte & Touche USA LLP consultant used an exclamation point in an email. "Guys do not use exclamation points," she thought. "Is he making fun of me?"
Guys do not use exclamation points?!!! Somewhere in the story there is a good point -- turns out that (shock) women are different than men, not just as consumers, but at work. Just why this is just now dawning on Deloitte and why it merits a marketplace front story, I have no idea. This is the kind of story I characterize as "blinding flash of the obvious" in that it covers something that 99 percent of the known universe already knows as news.
On the plus side, good to know I'm on the cutting edge with the exclamation point thing, betting that my use of :) puts me firmly into the online metrosexual camp. Wonder if there is a Facebook group for that?