Scoop du jour: Two-week vacation was anything but dull

George Le Masurier

Scoop du jour

Isn't is always the way? You’re a columnist slogging through the doldrums of summer, nothing much going on. So you take a couple weeks of vacation and — bam! — all heck breaks loose.

Just look at the news stories I missed in the past two weeks:

A graduate of Monroe College in the Big Apple is suing the school for $75,000, the amount she spent on tuition over four years, because she hasn’t been able to find a job since she finished her degree in April.

Key Bank in Seattle fired an employee who tried to stop a robbery. Instead of cooperating with the would-be bank robber, as per company policy, the employee lunged at him, chased him down several streets, tackled and held him until police arrived. He got a pink slip for his trouble. Rules are rules, you know.

Michael Jackson’s body still has not been buried or cremated.

Everywhere you look, people are talking about economic recovery. The housing market is getting busy again, Chevrolet is launching its 230-miles-per-gallon Volt, and those doomsayers who were predicting the demise of newspapers are suddenly changing tune. Newspapers, sigh, are gaining favor with Wall Street once again.

Only in America, the pinnacle of entrepreneurism in the world: An ex-con in New York is offering seminars in jailhouse etiquette and lingo to Wall Street executives convicted of fraud or one of the many other means of swindling innocent people. He’s charging $200 an hour to teach these white-collar crooks how to survive stacking time behind bars.

A new nightclub called the Model Lounge opened in New York City, allowing only female professional models. The ridiculously thin and attractive want to party where creepy guys can’t hit on them, and where women of lesser beauty can’t glare at them.

Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as a new Supreme Court justice despite her propensity for empathy, but President Obama’s surgeon general nominee, Dr. Regina Benjamin, is facing criticism because she’s too fat. Maybe the president should have nominated one of those skinny, ice-cold models?

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We’re working with Yahoo! The Peninsula Gateway’s parent company, McClatchy Newspapers, has formed a partnership with Yahoo! that already is creating great results for some local businesses.

We’re part of a national newspaper consortium working with Yahoo!, which is the leader in news and e-mail on the Internet. We provide Yahoo! with a local sales force, and they feature our news on a myriad of Web sites they power.

The result is that, with The Gateway, its Web site and Yahoo!, we can reach 78 percent of adults with Internet access in what’s known as the Seattle-Tacoma Designated Marketing Area — a geographic region that includes Gig Harbor and the Key peninsula.

One unique feature of this partnership is our ability to offer behavioral targeting. Yahoo’s proprietary technology can track online behavior and predict when a customer is preparing to make a purchase of anything from legal services, to airline tickets, to an automobile. It then places our advertisers’ messages in front of those people. We’re able to get the right message to the right person at exactly the right time.

If you’re interested in learning more about behavioral targeting, call our general manager, Mike Leonard, at 253-853-9241. Or e-mail him at mike.leonard@gateline.com.