news-record.com

We started The Joke's On You in January 2007. (The blog came later.)

In the feature, artist/humorist Tim Rickard draws the cartoon and readers provide the caption. It's not an original idea; other newspapers have a similar feature. Parade magazine went so far as to steal an idea from us. Well, seriously, I doubt it was stolen; it's just remarkably similar.

Anyway, the Evansville Courier-Press has debuted a feature with the exact same name. And to their credit, they credit us for the name. I only wish they had linked to us, too.

The title, "The Joke's On You," is shamelessly stolen from a newspaper in Greensboro, N.C., that does the same thing. We like the idea so much that we sought out a cartoonist to do it here.

I asked Tim his thoughts: "They stole the idea from us. We stole the idea from the New Yorker. That shows that we have much higher standards."

For several weeks, I have marveled at the daily media speculation over the running mates of Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain. Why waste so much time and manpower on a guessing game that would become news eventually anyway? Particularly, when the guessing game so often turns out wrong?

Juan Antonio Giner tracks the speculation and false reports, with Drudge reporting Obama-Bayh, the Wall Street Journal reporting that it's Tim Kaine, Warren Buffett picking Sam Nunn, and the Chicago Tribune and David Brooks getting it right.

As a bonus, he includes a front page for Hillary lovers.

Until yesterday, all the speculation was a non-story. So why spend all that energy chasing it?