Before there were schools of journalism, cub reporters were trained that "dog bites man is not news." But if "man bites dog," then you have a real story.
The trouble with that approach is that our readers can miss out on everyday, mundane happenings that they may be very interested in, even if they bore jaded news editors.
As usual, the US is ahead on this one. The Journal of Mundane Behaviour has been launched on the Internet (www.mundanebehavior.org) and is getting a respectable response to its articles on the gems hidden deep in the ordinary stuff of life.
The first issue had an article, for instance, on why the Japanese are uncharacteristically friendly in lifts, or elevators as we say in the US. Prof Terry Caesar at Mukogawa Women's University studied this and concluded that the close quarters and fleeting duration of the lift journey encourages passengers to deviate from the rigid social scripts that govern Japanese public life.
You may smile, but the sociologists who have founded the "mundane" journal have a point. Personally, I find it hard to know how to behave in a lift. Do you avert your eyes when someone gets in? Or do you give them a hearty "Good morning"? There was a funny scene in some film where someone broke wind in a crowded lift and caused mayhem but that is really deviant behaviour and the whole idea of the new journal is to get sociologists to get away from their obsession with the deviant.
The founder of the journal got the idea from an article two years ago in Sociological Theory, where Wayne Brekhus of the University of Missouri pointed out that though the humdrum makes up most of our social experience, sociologists go overboard studying the outlandish. "Although there are many deviance journals to explicitly analyse socially unusual behaviour," he complained, "there is no Journal of Mundane Behaviour to explicitly analyse conformity."
Now, hey presto, there is one, founded by Scott Schaffer, a sociologist at Californa State University, and his colleague Myron Orleans. The first issue had an article called "I'm Sick of Shaving Every Morning", which was a study of the political significance of male facial hair in different parts of the world.
As well as the Japanese going wild in lifts, there were articles on the arrangement of books on library shelves and the function of casual conversation ("plain talk") in Israeli culture.
There are three groups of readers for the journal. Academics, of course; normalisation specialists, who help people in prisons and mental institutes adapt to life outside; and those who for various reasons are not able to live a normal life. Those in the last group have told the editors that "the journal allows them to be vicariously normal by letting them know what normal is".
Scott Schaffer got a largely favourable response to the first issue, but about 5 per cent of the reaction was critical, such as "How boring you are!" He was tickled to learn that the journal had been included in a list of Top Ten Boring Websites in Metro, a free weekly handed out on the London Underground.
He and Myron take this as a compliment. "There's a real and joyous sense of irony in finding out that one's work on mundanity is `boring'," he says.
Alan Caruba, a former public relations executive, specialises in what is boring. His Boring Institute has a website (www.boringinstitute.com) which displays lists of boring films and TV shows, and produces a monthly Boring Report.
He thinks that the British royal family, especially Prince William, is the main contender for this year's most boring subject. "All the hype surrounding the young prince will stem from the media's frantic desire to keep you interested in this very boring family."
He began the whole thing as a spoof back in 1984 but has since found that boredom is an important sign of depression. Mr Caruba faults the American Psychological Association for leaving out boredom from the list of depression indicators.
"It is just too easy to dismiss boredom as something that will just go away on its own. Minor efforts to encourage a teen or aged parent to `get over it' are usually the only efforts made," he writes in his latest bulletin. He has received thousands of letters from teenagers and retirees both complaining of boredom and seeking ways to overcome it. He has made July this year's Anti-Boredom Month and has published a guide to Beating Boredom.
Mr Caruba is finding this year's US presidential election to be so dull that he has put himself forward as the candidate of the Boring Party. His slogan is "Elect me and ignore me".
He believes that if Al Gore is elected "Americans have to seriously consider the fact that there will be a rise in the suicide rate because we will be bored to death".
Mr Caruba is running because Bill Clinton "created far too much excitement in the last two years, distracting Americans from such events as the Academy Awards, professional wrestling and Mr Blackwell's annual list of the worst dressed women".
So there you have it. Discover the hidden charms of being mundane and boring but at the risk of driving people to suicide.
Or go out and bite a dog.