So it rained a little bit in Los Angeles for a few hours earlier this week. EVERYBODY PANIC.

If there was one good thing to come out of our sister site Deadspin's sad, incoherent, and deeply embarrassing ranking of "foods of the states," it was this: A dozen local news anchors saying "horrifying diarrhea sludge" over and over again.

A mundane local news story turned potentially lethal after the reporter phoned the police to report a driver slumped over in his seat in the middle of a highway.

When local news anchors around the country learned that Mike Myers and his wife Kelly Tisdale were expecting their second baby, they all had the exact same reaction.

After Air Canada lost her dog, one Ohio woman reached out to a news station in Sacramento to share her story.

The front page, above-the-fold news in the St. Augustine (FL) Record today: "St. Augustine Shores man discovers likeness of Virgin Mary in tree."

During a news report about a missing person being found dead in a lake last Friday, the Detroit Fox affiliate broadcast a floating dead body. It's not a clear image, but it sure looks like a body.

Following a recent bear sighting in Cranston, Rhode Island, reporter Julie Tremmel of the local NBC affiliate WJAR decided to help residents brush up on bear safety with a video demonstrating what one ought to do should they come across an ursine intruder.

When the above footage was posted on the website and social media properties of West Virginia's WVNS-TV (channel 59) earlier this week, it caused such outrage that it was almost immediately pulled.

In an effort to demonstrate just how ridiculous police response times are in Detroit, intrepid Motor City field reporter Charlie LeDuff applied his famous flair for the dramatic an experiment involving an actual report of a serious crime possibly still in progress.

When a local news interview with a great-grandmother who just turned 100 starts out with her asking the reporter "how's ya dick hangin'?," you know it's going to be good.

A Providence, Rhode Island, mother whose teenage daughter was shot during a family member's kindergarten graduation party was clearly in no mood for reporters when approached by a news crew from the local ABC affiliate WLNE.

You can't fault the WITI-Milwaukee Fox6 WakeUp crew for wanting to inject a little fun into their morning broadcast regimen. The morning is, traditionally, not a very fun time of day. Plus, it's their job to get all the Lavernes and Shirleys in town excited for a tedious day down at the bottlecapping plant.

New bosses often mean change. We here at Gawker would not know this, because all our managers die in their chairs, but we have heard from industry professionals that when there's a transition of a power at a company, the change often augurs new protocols, shifting job descriptions, the ominous possibility of layoffs, and, say, far worse, the loss of telecommuting. The immediate aftermath can be nerve-wracking—especially when the position at stake is CEO.

Even though the copy alone had already made her giggle, WDBJ7's Susan Bahorich, professional Weekend Morning Anchor that she is, believed she could make it through a fluff piece on a fat cat that has taken to swimming in order to lose weight.

Sweet Brown, the eminently quotable local news star, took her sweet time cashing in on her viral video fame, but now she's about to be everywhere.

A homeless, hatchet-wielding hitchhiker named Kai is being hailed as a hero after saving a woman from the clutches of a bear-hugging racist who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

From the What the Fuck Files, police in Cleveland have arrested three people accused of posing as a TV news crew, then tasering their interviewees.

In case Twitter hasn't told you, it's very cold in Los Angeles right now. Well, 50 degrees, otherwise known as summer in Milwaukee. But our taco-eating, trail-running bretheren are sensitive, okay?

Boy oh boy, what a crummy year, huh? A quick glance at the Wikipedia rundown of all the biggest news events of the year confirms that absolutely nothing good came of 2012.