I have nothing against having a picture of Little Susie sitting next to a monster mushroom in the local park. These types of stories are usually followed by having a neighborhood mycologist proudly announce that it's a (insert Latin name) and that these mushrooms aren't usually found around (insert name of local Elks Lodge) and that at first it looked like a (insert name of root vegetable or small Japanese car) and that my first thought was to (insert strange verb). These kinds of articles I can live with.
But if you're going to announce that "Maple harbors humongous fungus," and then proceed to write an article about how the a local retirement facility found a huge mushroom and then not identify it or even provide a picture... well that flunks Journalism 101. The offending article is here.
It doesn't appear that West Virginia's Bluefield Daily Telegraph posts a lot of photos on their site... I mean they didn't even include any for "Crawdads cause problem at leaky lake," or the investigative "Thieves stealing city’s storm drains." I can almost guarantee huge readership upswings if they included photos for these.
Of course there are always worse crimes against fungi. This second article from Colorado's Steamboat Pilot & Today is a better article - has several photos, and the account of a gentleman who found a 20 pound puffball. Things start off fine - “You slice it up thin and fry it up with butter, salt and pepper,” he said. “It doesn’t take long to cook up a mushroom.” I don't know if the fame of such a prized specimen delayed this culinary expectation. but... oh, you may not want to read the following -“When I picked it, it smelled good,” Wentworth said. “But this one got too ripe. I think the bugs got it.”
“I’m gonna chuck it in the Dumpster,” he said before not-so-ceremonially tossing the 20-pound wonder into the trash.
Photo from the The Steamboat Pilot & Today website.
No comments:
Post a Comment