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We received a humorous email and photo from a viewer last Friday that showed us the front page of the Arizona Daily Star.  It showed a red bus with Nebraska written across the top seemingly stuck in the snow and ice of the deep freeze we'd been experiencing.  Or did it?

The slug to the photo read: "Going Nowhere Fast -- And Cold.  Nebraska is no stranger to hard winter weather.  But this is a bit over the top, even for the Cornhusker State.  This bus was caught out in the open Thursday in Elkhorn.  Can we call this sweet revenge for Nebraska's 33-0 Holiday Bowl drubbing of Arizona?"

I thought it was a great photo from the Associated Press but as I looked at it closer, I noticed some landmarks and problems.  It probably didn't mean anything to those reading the Arizona newspaper but it had been taken out of context in a big way.  It was a bus that had been parked on the back side of Elkhorn Lanes -- the bowling alley that burned down last week.  The bus was covered in ice because of the water from firefighters, not because of our "hard winter weather" as the caption stated.  You can even see the smoke and ladder truck sort of cropped from the AP photo.

Here's my picture:

For comparison, here's the link to the front page of the Arizona paper:

www.azstarnet.com/ss/2010/01/08/frontpage.pdf   

In our business, context means everything.  Perhaps the editors believed the photo was a great picture and left it at that -- figuring few would be interested in the events surrounding the story.  I thought our viewers would be.

Brian