From the BBC:

About 200 youngsters caused damage put at £20,000 to a family home (in Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham in the north of England near Newcastle Upon Tyne) after a party organised on a website.

Police said a teenage girl used the social networking site MySpace to advertise the party while her parents were away from home on Easter Monday.

The 17-year-old's mother has described the party as "house rape" and called the revellers "worse than animals". ...

"I told her that I did not want any kids or drink in the house while I was away and I'm furious." ...

She said her daughter, who has denied creating the message on the website, was now staying with friends for a "cooling off" period.

Update

The mother of the family says they may have to move out of the house permanently.

 Rachael Bell denies advertising the event on MySpace while her parents were away and claims her profile was hacked.

Her mother Elaine said the house now has "too many horrible memories".

From an April 7 commentary in the Toronto Star by former editor John Honderich:

First, Rwanda was too poor for anyone in the West to care.

Second, I hearken back to the comment of Kofi Annan, later UN secretary-general, who remarked that many Western nations were reticent to intervene in Rwanda because they didn't feel a "kinship" with Africans.

Translation: Who cares about feuding blacks in Africa anyway.

Could such a story be missed again?

In the past 13 years, the number of correspondents stationed in Africa has dropped significantly.

Virtually every analysis of Western media shows a decline of reportage on Africa. For example, ABC's Evening News spent just 11 minutes throughout all of 2006 reporting on Darfur.

It seems, quite frankly, that media interest in Africa is on the wane. And what stories appear invariably centre on AIDS, poverty or corruption.

Any visitor to Rwanda is struck by the number of memorials to the genocide that carry the ever-present message "Never Again."

Can the same be said of the media missing another such story on this continent?

Based on what I've read and seen, I'm far from confident. Which, as a former editor, troubles me profoundly.

CBS News had to apologize for a Katie Couric video essay that had essentially been a rip-off of a Wall Street Journal article. Quick question: Is it really a Katie Couric essay if it was written by a CBS producer?

This NYT piece looks at what your choice in vehicle says about your sexual orientation (which may explain the ejaculatory nature of some ads these days -- get your boost!!).

U.S. talk radio knob Don Imus got canned Wednesday for his disparaging remarks about black players on the Rutgers womens' basketball team. The NYT's David Carr looks at how today's news media realities doomed Imus (who should have been doomed in any event).