Who rocks the house? The Herald rocks the house! And when The Herald rocks the house, it rocks it all the way down!

I can't believe how many papers treated the Zarqawi killing like it was first-day news. This is why so many newspapers deserve to die. There were so many forward-looking angles to the story, but half the headlines were just a variation on "Terror leader dead". Grrrr!

If "forward-looking" is a synonym for "speculate without resorting to factual information," or if your editors choose a "we" headline in a spasm of boosterism that seems sadly misplaced and off-key, then I choose neither of those.

Give me instead option A--TELL US WHAT HAPPENED, be sober, include everything factual, leave out speculation. And yeah, the Times and the C-J seemed to be in the ballpark there.

At least the Sun's "forward-looking" headline had a hint of honesty--'impact uncertain' indeed! A newspaper or a cable news outlet's job is NOT TO FORTUNE-TELL future impacts.

Exactly when did the mission of journalism--reporting facts--get so encumbered by marketing missions?

Let's discuss impacts once they've impacted, so to speak.

Warm. Up. The virgins.

That, my friends, is the boldest American newspaper I saw.

And how does the Post follow up that front? Turn the page and the bold, all caps headline across a two-page spread reads: "EVIL ZARQAWI BOMBED TO HELL". I swear I am not making this up. Then again, this is the Post. You can't rule out an F-bomb in display type. I guess they went conservative. ;-)

Sorry, make that "EVIL ZARQAWI BLOWN TO HELL". Whatever, you get the idea!

I've got a serious problem with warm up the virgins. That's crap journalism that gives our profession a black eye.

That's crap journalism that gives our profession a black eye.

Frankly, I think it is more Mary Mapes and Jayson Blair than the Post's exuberant headlines that give journalism a black eye.

I think when reading a popular article that the world is interested in, it is important to do two of the previously mentioned topics:

1. Tell readers what they already know
2. Tell how it happened.

I think it’s important to review what u may believe that "everyone" knows because there’s always those few that have no idea what’s going on in the world...at least this way they can pretend they knew about it before they read it. Secondly I think knowing how it happened is an extreme factor in reading the paper. Readers may know the climax of the popular story that is being reported around the world, but let’s face it, were nosey Americans. We want details, times, places and exact references to how someone knows what took place.