Don't let a truffle get in the way of a good tale

It's six days to the Olympics in Torino and reporters have already converged on the hills of Piemonte (aka Piedmont) to write local color vignettes of the region. This dispatch, courtesy of the Washington Post, is the kind of journalism you will be reading/seeing/hearing in the coming days. Reporter goes to Alba, famous for its white truffles, but alas cannot find any as the last ones were gobbled up by mid-November. (Note to editors: truffles have a very limited shelf life. Do a story on some other facet of this area's fabulous cuisine.) Nonetheless, the story has been assigned. The expense budget determined. The article has been laid out on page. All the Post needs is about 1500 words of reportage and basta cosi, everybody's happy. Except for those of us who want to read something about truffles.