Downstreamer Yahoos

Before I get to this month's Yahoos (see the footnote for an explanation of 'Yahoos'), let's look at the March stats. Numbers always tell their own story.

For this current post, Google News returned 99 chess stories, of which nine sources had two or more stories. These are shown in the chart on the left.

Those nine sources accounted for 53 stories, leaving 46 sources with a single story. As always, Chess.com accounted for far more stories than any other source.

Two other perennial leaders, Chessbase.com and the Guardian, accounted for three stories each. In last month's Schizophrenic Yahoos (March 2023), I noted,

Starting more than a year ago, Google has consistently returned a small selection of stories that are more than a month old. [...] In February 2023, the 'Old Yahoos' were gone. Will this continue next month?

This month being already next month, the answer is 'No'. The 'Old Yahoos' are gone and I won't mention them again unless they reappear.

As so often happens, the chess story that dominated the news this month wasn't about the game itself; it was about relationships between top players. Since I already discussed it a few days ago in The Dark Side of Women's Chess (March 2023; Wall Street Journal: 'How Sexual Assault Allegations Against a U.S. Chess Grandmaster Went Unaddressed for Years'), I'll just mention some of the downstream stories that resulted from that main story. The most revealing of them appeared today:-

• 2023-03-30: Being a woman in chess can feel 'lonely' says streamer Anna Cramling, as the game grapples with harsh truths (cnn.com) • 'With multiple women coming forward about their disturbing experiences in the chess world, including accusations of sexual misconduct by a grandmaster, the historic game is having its own #MeToo moment.'

Before I delve a little deeper into the subject, I have to attend to a priority responsibility. It's been raining for more than 24 hours and the family dog hasn't had his 'daily' walk since two days ago. The rain has diminished and he keeps looking at me sadly with his big soft eyes, asking 'When?' Bye for now...

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

***

Later, much later: Three weeks later, to be exact. I started several times to finish this post, but gave up each time. The only other story worth mentioning is another angle on the 'Dark Side of Women's Chess':-

• 2023-03-13: Shahade Tweet Motivates Ellen Carlsen To Report Harassment (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'Ellen Carlsen, GM Magnus Carlsen's older sister, says WGM Jennifer Shahade's allegations against Alejandro Ramirez led to her report an incident where she says she was harassed by a chess player as a minor.'

There were some other stories this month involving women's chess, but they were not on this topic. What will next month bring?