Serendipity factor in newspaper-reading is sometimes bewildering

Newspaper stalwarts like to tout the delight print readers feel when their eyes fall upon interesting juxtapositions of stories they’d never see online. But sometimes such paper-copy serendipity can be bewildering. Look at today’s Star Tribune B section (emphasis on B).

Dominating the cover is Steve Brandt’s story about legalizing bee-keeping in Minneapolis, titled “They’re abuzz with the news.” The story jumps to the section’s back page, where it continues under the headline “Creating a buzz.” There, it’s placed alongside a photo with this caption (emphasis added):

At the Metrodome, actor Bee Vang helped U of M students conduct a social experiment on creating buzz around someone to draw the attention of total strangers. Vang starred in the movie “Gran Torino.”

As it happens, the photo belongs to an adjacent story: Gail Rosenblum’s column on the Campus People Watchers, a University of Minnesota student group that organizes outings for the purpose of seeing whatever they happen across.

The organization has been written up in two proper newspapers but got its “big break,” Rosenblum writes, after a Web site called suite101.com named it one of the country’s weirdest college groups. Membership “fluctuates from about 12 to 20.” So for now, these serendipity-seekers are still outnumbered by newspaper readers.