As a longtime newspaper, magazine and Internet editor, I frequently find that people who know me want some insight into one of the most perplexing idiosyncrasies: Why it is that the media seems to swarm to certain stories all at once, sometimes to the exclusion of just about everything else?

Sometimes the media mob swarms around a person, like Nadya Suleman, the “Octomom,” or U.S. Airways Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, who safely landed his damaged airliner in the Hudson River. But sometimes, the swarm may be around a topic, such as the government bailout of the banking industry or the propriety of using bailout funds for bonuses at places like American International Group.

And sometimes, the media swarms around a story that is so obvious and such common knowledge that it hardly seems like news at all, at least not to anyone who has half a brain and is moderately alert.

Still don’t know what I’m talking about? OK, here’s my example of a terribly obvious story the media is starting to swarm about today: the notion that it is tough for older workers to find a job.

This doesn’t sound like such a big news flash to me, but then again, writing about workforce issues is what we do here at Workforce Management. Any semi-attentive reader of this blog and user of this Web site knows that the difficultly of older workers in finding new employment has been dissected in many different ways, shapes and forms, especially since the recession kicked in late last year.

But the mainstream media seem to have just discovered that older workers, more than their younger counterparts, are having a really difficult time finding work in this economy. Just in the past few days, I’ve seen long stories on this topic in the Los Angeles Times (“Job market is especially cruel for older workers”), The Wall Street Journal (“Dogged Pursuit: Professionals Find New Livelihood Selling Frankfurters”), The New York Times (“Longer Unemployment for Those 45 and Older”) and on the Scripps Howard News Service (“Older workers worry they are last in line for jobs”), to name just a few.

Today, The New York Times even had a long debate with five so-called experts under the headline “Older Workers Need Not Apply.”

One “expert” actually said that “older workers have a lifetime of preferences and skills—essentially unique-shaped pegs that can fit into a limited number of holes [while] younger workers are malleable and can fit more easily into a variety of positions.”

This incredibly broad generalization—that older workers are severely limited because of their long experience, while younger workers with a limited background are more flexible and therefore employable—brings little real insight to this discussion. But that just gets back to my original point: Is anyone really surprised that older workers are having a hard time finding new work? Is this a news flash to anyone?

I suspect that you’ll be reading a lot more on this topic in the next few weeks, because newspaper stories like this feed radio and television (since they do very little original reporting), and that in turn feeds the cable talk shows, bloggers and the larger public debate.

In the end, there will be a lot of words expended on something that was not really news six months ago, and is even less so today. Employers prefer younger workers, for the most part, because they are generally cheaper. There are other reasons, of course, but that’s the long and the short of it. It’s hardly a news flash to anyone who engages the brain for even just a few minutes a day.

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