Our air conditioning is out over in College Park, so we spent the night with family in Longwood. Our morning conversation today centered around the newsiness–or lack thereof–in the Orlando Sentinel these days.

My mother-in-law’s chief argument in favor of the Sentinel as feature-heavy, news-lite fluff publication was this article:

Glamour and glitter are elevated to an art in philanthropist Harriett Lake’s fashion collection — OrlandoSentinel.com ^[1]

Now, Harriett Lake sure seems like a nice old lady. But how does she get the front page of the Local & State section when there are at least two developing stories (the Democratic primary controversy, the upcoming tax changes) that would seem to merit front-page space more than an elderly woman and her flamboyant hats?

I’ve noticed the same trend–feature stories earning spots on front pages throughout the paper, while what you might call “real” news is buried in the ghetto of page three, five, seven, nine, etc. And it’s not even so much that the feature stories are BAD, just that in putting them on Page One of the main section or Local & State, you send a subliminal message: There are important things happening in our region, and we would rather tell you about flamboyant hats.

What say you, oh Metblog Orlando readership? Is the Sentinel well on its way to USA Today status, or is there life in the old girl yet?