January 23, 2023
Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun at Lighting Project
Lights-always-on situation at Massachusets school continues to spread across mainstream media
For decades the satirical news feature, Weekend Update, has been a popular crowdpleaser on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. On Saturday, January 21, anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che reported on the week's biggest news about tennis star Andy Murray, China’s population and ... a high school lighting control system.
Jost delivered the setup and punchline in his normal deadpan manner: “Due to a computer error, a school in Massachusetts has been unable to turn off its lights for over a year and a half. The students are doing fine, but the classroom hamster has gone insane.”
The punchline pays off with a news graphic picturing a wide-eyed hamster holding a lit cigarette amidst dozens of already-smoked cigarette butts, and a wall with tick marks counting the days that the lights have been constantly on.
The story was brought to mainstream media attention last week when NBC News published a report on the lights-constantly-on situation at a Wilbraham, MA high school. inside.lighting followed up on the report, collecting additional information from the school district and lighting controls manufacturer. Other media covering the story include Yahoo!, New York Post, NPR and msn.com.
EdisonReport, a publication with a history of demanding credit (IN ALL CAPS) for publishing news already in the public domain or already published by inside.lighting, seemingly copied and pasted its entire 662-word article from The Boston Globe media site Boston.com. EdisonReport's seemingly plagiarized article is entitled "This Mass. High School’s Lights Have Been Stuck on for More Than a Year" and at press time, is still live. The Boston.com article published a day earlier is entitled "This Mass. high school’s lights have been stuck on for more than a year."
