Ordinarily it wouldn’t be surprising that a HUGE and omnipresent company like Starbucks could, on any given day, land on the AP wires, and in pretty much every major daily across the country.  Earnings reports, the departure of a VIP or a large scale product change would all be acceptable justification for major coverage.  No such event occurred yesterday.  Rather, Starbucks announced that it was closing its doors for a few hours to train employees. 

Hmmm.  Insert gasp here. 

If this "story" doesn’t make it painfully obvious that the media covers things of personal interest even when they are not particularly newsworthy, we can’t imagine what would!  Is there another national chain that would elicit such coverage?  We have often thought that it would be amusing to make a list of weekly/monthly PR gaffes, but the hoopla surrounding the three hour closure has led us to think that we ought to create two categories, PR Gaffes and PR Gifts!  Starbucks is laughing all the way to the bank, no doubt!