President Obama stepped off Air Force One into 80-degree weather in Hawaii on Thursday afternoon, leaving behind snow banks and that morning’s Senate health care vote in favor of clear skies and a wide-open, 10-day vacation schedule.

Obama emerged smiling and without a coat, wearing a blue shirt and khakis and holding the hand of his younger daughter, Sasha. Michelle Obama, in a blue sleeveless dress, held older daughter Malia’s hand as the family descended the stairs and put on colorful flowered leis, the island trademark.

The president and first lady briefly shook hands with several dozen uniformed military service members and their families at Hickam Air Force base adjacent to Pearl Harbor. But Obama made no remarks, and after a long first year in office, it appeared he was ready to shift into vacation mode.

That’s the article’s three paragraph lead. It’s supposed to contain the most important information in the story. Obama’s wardrobe? How many hands he shook? These facts have no value. Why is the press in Hawaii?

Sure, if China suddenly announces it will cut emissions by 90% in 2011, it will be useful to get Obama’s reaction to it. If only we had the technology to contact the president in Hawaii from the continental U.S. Oh wait.

A pool of reporters chronicling meaningless events is unnecessary and inefficient. The desperate search for an important story about an important person will invariably lead to an unimportant story about an important person.  Would the Washington Post sell significantly more issues if Anne Kornblut had stayed in D.C. and written a story about a few past dealing analogous to the Ben Nelson healthcare compromise? Probably not. But in the long run those are the kind of decisions newspapers need to make in order to maximize their potential.

The AP story on the new regulations provides a single quote from the airline camp.

The airline industry said it will comply with the regulations — which go into effect in 120 days — but predicted the result will be more canceled flights, more inconvenience for passengers.

“The requirement of having planes return to the gates within a three-hour window or face significant fines is inconsistent with our goal of completing as many flights as possible. Lengthy tarmac delays benefit no one,” said Air Transport Association President and CEO James May.

Not much substance there. The airline industry just sounds like a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t like rules.

Meanwhile, instead of printing a single vacuous quote the Chicago Tribune adheres to a higher standard and actually articulates both sides of the issue.

Airline executives had argued against setting a hard time limit for delays, saying large numbers of travelers could be stranded if carriers cancel flights they otherwise would have flown for fear of penalties.

The Air Transport Association, a trade group representing large carriers, had lobbied against the new regulations, noting that lengthy delays remain statistical anomalies. Despite the foul weather, only 66 flights out of about 250,000 flown between Dec. 16 and 20 were delayed by more than three hours after pulling away from the airport gate, according to FlightStats, which tracks airline arrivals and departures.

The new rule leaves airlines and airports with little time to resolve a host of logistical issues. One problem is that aircraft lined up for takeoff can’t easily pull out of the “conga line” of planes when they reach the time limit.

The issue seems slightly more complex now, doesn’t it?

Here’s the question we should be asking ourselves. Would we rather have our flight canceled while we’re still in the terminal, or board the plane with a 50% chance of taking off on time and a 50% chance of waiting on the tarmac for six hours before the flight is canceled?  What about if it’s 70-30? 90-10?

The airlines do their best to cancel as few flights as possible. Sometimes when a storm rolls in quicker than expected or a mechanical problem occurs it leads to lengthy delays.

On the other hand, the airlines probably don’t do all they can to make things easier for passengers. For example, If there’s a three hour line on the runway, why not delay the boarding of the next hour’s worth of planes until the line is only one hour long? That way passengers spend an extra hour in the airport instead of on the plane.  Hopefully the new regulations will force the airlines to come up with new common sense solutions.

Uh, I’ll pass on the photos.

Pepsi will not advertise in this year’s Super Bowl, the company confirmed Thursday, deciding to sit out the big game for the first time in 23 years.

What could bring about such a drastic change?

The decision to forego this year’s Super Bowl comes as Pepsi prepares to launch a new cause-oriented marketing campaign early next year.

The new campaign, called the “Pepsi Refresh Project,” is a long term, multi-million-dollar grant program, the company said. Under the program, Pepsi (PEP, Fortune 500) will grant money to charitable causes proposed and selected by consumers.

To summarize, instead of spending millions saturating a soft-drink market where impressions are already formed, Pepsi elected to purchase one media cycle dedicated to publicizing its charitable causes.

And by “purhcase” I mean “get for free.”

Sounds like a good trade.

Today’s headline:

“Mom scrambles to turn things round for at-risk 2nd-grader”

And the answer is…

MSM

1. An arbitrary list created by a magazine to sell issues.

2. A magazine’s decision about who to put on the cover.

The winner of 14 majors has virtually disappeared since driving his SUV into a tree during a bizarre accident outside his Orlando-area home last month. His wife, Elin Nordegren, has also laid low, though photos of her surfaced this week, her hand showing no sign of a wedding ring.

That can’t be everything! What did Woods not eat for dinner? Where did Nordegren not get her hair done?

Despite nationwide concern over the H1N1 virus and a barrage of announcements from public health officials imploring Americans to call in sick, many employees continue to drag themselves into the workplace, powered by Tylenol, lozenges and fistfuls of tissues…Pandemic or not, many staffers say, it’s better to show up wheezing and sneezing than be perceived as a slacker, especially when jobs are scarce.

This mirrors a trend which was also observed in 2008, 2007, 2006, and every single year between 1972 and 2005.

More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work.

The results of the poll, which surveyed 708 unemployed adults from Dec. 5 to Dec. 10 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, help to lay bare the depth of the trauma experienced by millions across the country who are out of work

You know what would be wild? If a newspaper put the kibosh on a story about how four arbitrary people are affected by unemployment, and instead wrote an article with ideas and information unemployed people could use to improve their lives.

Sigh. Maybe someday.

In this way, cyber criminals have made the attacks more personal because they are sending out messages appropriating victims’ names, says Marian Merritt, an Internet safety advisor for Norton, the antivirus brand produced by Symantec. “In the past, people felt annoyed by spam, they didn’t really feel a sense of being attacked,” Merritt said. “But if your Facebook account is hacked, it’s embarrassing.”

You know who doesn’t make a good source for a cyber-crime article? An employee for an anti-virus company that will profit if people fear  cyber-crime. I assumed they touched on this stuff by your second semester in journalism school.

But I suppose I can let it go. It is merely a single isolated mistake. What? Oh crap…

Looking ahead to 2010, antivirus maker Trend Micro predicts that there will be more attacks on Mac operating systems. Previously ignored by malware makers because of its relatively low market share, the booming popularity of iPhones is drawing the attention of cybercriminals.

“As the mobile OS landscape changes, and with devices comprising a huge amount of memory and storing a host of sensitive data, devices such as the iPhone and Google Android may increase as popular targets for bad guys,” Trend Micro reports in its December report, “the Future of Threats and Threat Technologies.

An anti-virus software maker thinks the future will require a greater need for anti-virus software.  Shocking. These companies aren’t necessarily wrong. But it is wrong to quote them as if they are  impartial sources.

Look, work is hard. Sometimes the best source for a story doesn’t answer his phone right away. But that doesn’t mean you should run to some corporate employee who will help his company by telling you exactly what you want to hear.