OPINION — It's a slow news day in Delaware. We know, because checking is our job: state police haven't filed a release since Friday.

OPINION — It's a slow news day in Delaware. We know, because checking is our job: state police haven't filed a release since Friday.

So what's filling the local feeds? We looked.

One Delaware outlet turned reader votes into the news itself — three separate "Athlete of the Week" results stories in a single day, each ending in an ad for the next poll. The same outlet got two stories out of one poll asking readers to pick a dream concert lineup for a fair that's nine months away.

Another ran the same "where to vote" explainer four times in six days. Two sister outlets under one owner ran the same police-dog obituary on the same day and counted it as two stories. And one feed's top item this morning is a weekend guide — for the weekend that just ended.

None of it is false. All of it is padding — volume manufactured because the feed must be fed.

Here's our slow day: a school closure families needed to know, two Philadelphia stories, a fatal fire across the river. That's the news there was. We told you it was slow instead of dressing filler up as more.

We could name names. The receipts are in a drawer. But we don't swing at other news companies that haven't swung at us — we can make the point without swinging at anybody who hasn't swung first.

#Delaware #DelawareNews #TeamMurphyMedia302