JOURNALISTS SELL SOULS FOR DOUGHNUTS: The "Minneapolis Star-Tribune" has a piece on the fawning coverage the Krispy Kreme doughnut franchise has received while setting up shop in the Twin Cities. It includes this quote:

Cops get stereotyped as having a doughnut jones. But we now know journalists can be had for 39 cents' worth of dough and glazed sugar.

I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but it's the truth. Especially when it comes to Krispy Kreme and journalists who've had little exposure to this delightful confection. I grew up in a Southern city that had several KK's, so they never seemed that special to me. But now that I live where there's only something like two Krispy Kremes, I really appreciate how vastly superior they are to Dunkin Doughnuts, which are located on virtually every corner around here. People really seem to go nuts over KK, and journalistic objectivity vanishes. On the rare occasions that someone has brought a couple dozen Krispy Kremes to work, the scene is always reminiscent of that spot-on description of "The City Light" newsroom from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities":

Rows of diode-light computer terminals in putty-gray "2001" sci-fi casings lent the city room of "The City Light" a gloss of order and modernity. It never survived a second glance. The desks were covered in the usual litter of paper, plastic cups, books, manuals, almanacs, magazines and sooty ashtrays. The usual shell-backed young men and women sat at the keyboards. A numb dull clattering - thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk - rose from the keyboards, as if an immense mah-jongg tournament was in progress. The reporters, rewrite men, and copy editors were hunched over in the age-old way of journalists. Every few seconds a head would straighten up, as if coming up for air, and yell out something about slugs, headline counts, or story lengths. But not even the excitement of deadline pressure could survive for long. A rear door opened, and a Greek wearing a white uniform came staggering in carrying a prodigious tray full of coffee and soda containers, boxes of doughnuts, cheese Danishes, onion rolls, crullers, every variety of muck and lard known to the takeout food business, and half the room deserted the computer consoles and descended upon him, rooting about the tray like starving weevils.