This Year's Lawrence Press Release

§ Tuesday, January 24, 2006 @ 11:23 AM

This year's edition of the Lawrence press release concerning trivia was finally posted late yesterday. Mostly just the same old thing, except there's something I love about this paragraph:

In some ways, the broadcast format switch is merely catching up to the sea change the contest's "landscape" has undergone the past half dozen years or so. Gone are the days of closets stuffed with index cards, encyclopedias and ready-reference books on movies, music and television shows that get unpacked each January. Laptops with high-speed Internet connections have made books passe and become the weapon of choice for all teams serious about silliness. A search engine guru is now just as important as a good quarterback on a football team for this generation of triviaholics.

The paragraph begins by trying to put a positive spin on the transition to going webcast-only on WLFM, then goes on to state a falsehood - chiefly that teams no longer use books. Granted, our team has had a serious dearth of books since our first year (when we answered one question thanks to the use of a world almanac), but any of the older teams are still loaded down with books and files and other non-digital notes. Oh well.

Sitting at the bar eavesdropping on conversations the last couple weeks, I'm really surprised how few people realize that WLFM is no longer on the air. I think most of them have been working their way through the dial, heard the new station broadcasting at the 91.1 FM frequency, and just assumed it was still WLFM. Just more evidence of how under-the-table this entire elimination of the broadcast was.

» Lawrence University Press Release