Romenesko's Obscure Store and Reading Room
By Jessica Scott
What qualifies a news story to be important enough to appear on the
top of a news website? Does it have international significance? Does
it involve someone famous? How about natural disasters? None of these
qualities alone would qualify a story to appear at the top of the
page on obscurestore.com. Don't expect to find the top headlines here.
The stories on obscurestore.com, are, as the name implies, obscure.
Have you ever been sent or forwarded a link to some news story that
was almost too bizarre to be believed? Did you wonder where your friend
dug up such an odd story? He might have discovered it on Romenesko's
Obscure Store and Reading Room. This site is a haven for the truly
strange stories of the day that might otherwise go unnoticed. For
example, today I read on obscurestore about a story in the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel which reported a High School baseball player who
was booted from his team for appearing in his employer's "Exceptional
Worker" ad because it's a commercial endorsement - even though
he did not eve get paid for the ad. The stories range from the ridiculous
to the horrifying, but they would almost never appear on a major news
site, and most definitely not on the front page.
Although this site won't give you the top headlines like most news
sources, it does provide some entertainment value, as well as an interesting
look at parts of middle America that often go unnoticed by the national
news. The obscurestore is rarely boring, and you can also find numerous
links to several print magazines which also feature stories that are
a bit off the beaten path, like those linked to on obscurestore.com,
links to gossip sites as well as independent weblogs are also available.