Dark Jedi spared from jail? Do or do not, there is no sparing!

Thank the Gods that I remembered my blog password...
It's been far too long, and the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
So to get things "blasting off" (ed: so to speak), we shall start off with the essential worldly happenings so far in 2008: the recently released Iron Man film and an AP story about dark Jedi.
*See other posting for the film review.

To start, what truly merits a news story? Is it the headline? Is it the content and density of a story, deserving to be published in a paper (or papers)? Or is it the simple execution of selling more papers?
I want to look closely at the AP story of the drunk Welsh guy who attacked the first Welsh Jedi church dressed in makeshift dark jedi garb.
An interesting enough story, but how is it relevent in the media world?
More importantly, does it warrant the Associated Press to report on the event with a 400+ word story?
The story, essentially boils down to a drunk guy brutalizing (without inflicting any serious injuries) a bunch of harmless nerds for their religious beliefs.
This story does not warrant local paper coverage.
So, if the story deserves some coverage, where does it belong?
The answer, lies in word-of-mouth, sheer oddness and the ability to attract other nerds to something so outlandish, the subject matter deserves to be retitled "Someone's Believe It or Not."
This is the fourth time I've heard about this story in less than a week.
For one, I saw it running along a real-time news blog on a comic book Web site (If you must ask, it was in research for my movie review), I saw it on yahoo news the same day, MSN news and just recently, giving it a six-day run, in my email in an encouraging e-mail to encourage more blogging.
So does this make it a successful news story, in essence, for being circulated so widely that there is no escaping the long-reaching grip of a drunken Welshman?
Or is it simply me noticing the story so many times on a variety of online news sources?