A stirring of discontent over resorting to a vague description

Alexa, cycling through an unending stream of images from my kitchen counter, beckons me to connect with a variety of network television sports content.

And I am troubled.

It’s not the marketing pitch. It’s not the sports topic. Heavens no. It’s not the pitch to network television instead of an informative, bountiful variety of stories at a reputable newspaper site.

No, it’s that one, niggling, little word.

Content.

I’m confident that if I took Alexa up on its offer, I would find some engaging updates and compelling reports on top games and developments in the sports world. But do they have to call it content?

I have complained before about the watering down of language with the abuse of the word experience. “Now everything that used to be a simple verb is an experience,” I wrote at the time. “The shopping experience. The voting experience. The dining experience …” You get the picture.

And now here we are with the increasingly frequent promise to wow you with sports content or news content or entertainment content or any manner of vague subject matter content. Are we not just diminishing the work we present and that you see to the status of “junk” or “stuff?” Sports junk. Entertainment stuff. News matter.

Bleuch.

For the truth is that what we have to offer is indeed engaging and diverse and worthy of your attention.

In the past week, our news pages have helped you understand how sitting congressmen withstood interparty challenges in the March 19 primary, how to prepare for the coming solar eclipse, how climate change is affecting both Lake Michigan and Major League Baseball. We’ve described lifesaving measures by teenagers on a runaway school bus, local apartment building sales, one town’s potential electricity taxes and another’s battle with school districts over tax strategies and much, much more.

We’ve provided insights into exciting entertainment options from a Cirque du Soleil performance to local concert highlights, previews of the remake of the classic “Ghostbusters” movie and tips for finding the best restaurants for Easter dining. We’ve helped you with gardening, home decorating and meal planning.

And as for sports? We’ve provided incisive previews, analysis and reporting from Mike McGraw and others on the prospects and actions of the Northwestern Wildcats and University of Illinois Fighting Illini at the NCAA tournament, not to mention entertaining and thoughtful examinations from the likes of Kevin Schmit, Bernie Lincicome, Jim O’Donnell and more on the on the whole men’s and women’s March Madness, um, experience. We’ve offered looks into the White Sox’ and the Cubs’ prospects for the upcoming baseball season and accounts of numerous local high school games, plus Dave Oberhelman’s mini-profiles of local sports achievers, including college wrestlers with who have been named All-Americans. And we topped it off with a mouthwatering Opening Day look at the dining fare that will greet you at Guaranteed Rate and Wrigley Field this summer.

Is all this — and the so much more that could be listed — really just, ugh, “content?”

Sure, I realize that we want to find descriptive terms that show how our reports take new forms these days — question-and-answer interviews, audio and video online, informative charts and illustrations. And it’s not easy to sum all that variety into a single descriptive term.

But do take note, Alexa, and let it not all be belittled. It is definitely more than just content.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.