Hot Oil News, Thin Verification

The Associated Press claims to have breaking news this afternoon that "Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama." The scientists mentioned are from the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science.

The odd thing is that the reporters offer no quotes on the main scare in the story. Moreover, a news release by the College itself mentions nothing about Mobile Bay.

What the scientists themselves say is:

Researchers aboard the University of South Florida’s R/V Weatherbird II conducting experiments in a previously unexplored region of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have discovered what initial tests show to be a wide area with elevated levels of dissolved hydrocarbons throughout the water column, possibly indicating that a limb of an undersea oil plume has spread northeast toward the continental shelf.
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The findings will undergo confirmation testing when the R/V Weatherbird II returns to its homeport of St. Petersburg at approximately 8 a.m. on Friday.
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“Our concern regarding these contaminants is they have the potential to be incorporated in the food web,” said David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer who is a lead investigator in the research mission. “The first ecological impact of this spill is the effect on coastal habitats, including marshes, beaches and estuaries. The second threat to nature would be the impact on the food webs. That is what’s at risk.”

Based on what's been seen today from the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, we have entered the "Hysterical Press Season." That's the time that frequently follows a widely publicized crisis that has a painfully prolonged denouement.

Some reporters get itchy and restless. They want to wrap this thing up. Readers beware.

Closer to home, the Pensacola News Journal is reporting, responsibly, that a hundred or so pieces of what appear to be "tarballs" -- but may be anything, including old storm-damaged road material left from 2004 -- were found on the beach Wednesday. County neighborhood services deputy Keith Wilkins and SRIA general manager "Buck" Lee are being suitably cautious. They --

said most of what has been found on the beach so far has been pieces of asphalt from beach roads destroyed in Hurricane Ivan, charcoal, old tar balls from ships or oil spilled during Hurricane Katrina or from unknown sources.

The material has been sent to a lab for analysis.

Wilkins isn't being hysterical, merely realistic when he adds, "One day a tar ball will wash up here, and it will be BP's. And that will show the slick has reached this far and has impacted this area."

Meanwhile, about the last thing we need are bogeyman stories from impatient journalists at the AP or anywhere else.

Dispatch from the Culture War Front

Stephen Colbert has won the Associated Press' annual editors' award for "Celebrity of the Year." He beat out J.K. Rowling and Al Gore for the honor of being named the person who "had the biggest impact on pop culture in 2007."

It's a dead certainty that Al Gore is relieved, although he probably did draw more votes than Brittney and Kynne Spears combined.

The news was announced in a globe-spanning dispatch by the AP's culture beat reporter, Jake Coyle. But guess who's quoted to explain that vote to the rest of the world? Pensacola's own Julio Diaz, editor of the Pensacola News Journal's Weekender magazine and Santa Claus fan.

"Colbert is more than an entertainer, he's a force of nature," said Diaz. "He's influenced the way we look at the news and even the way we speak. Whenever a major news story breaks, one of my first thoughts is what Colbert's spin on the story will be."

Now, the Florida Panhandle is just about as far as you can get from the center of the Cultural Universe. So you have to wonder: How it is that New York City's Jake Coyle turned to Pensacola, Florida's Julio Diaz for an explanation?

Could it be that whenever a major cultural happening occurs in America, one of Jake Coyle's first thoughts is, "I wonder what Julio Diaz is thinking about this?"