Black and white and read all over
I'm saddened, truly, by the demise of newspapers across the country. Yes, I definitely use the web to get news and information -- like when I'm obsessively tracking election returns and superdelegates -- but I love actually sitting down with the newspaper spread out in front of me on the couch or the breakfast table or the train. And I hate that, because print is now somewhat passé, good reporters have to jump ship, or -- if they are lucky enough to stay on -- to cover 27 different beats instead of one or two. I work with a handful of former journalists, and I interview a whole lot of candidates who are former journalists (the puker is not among them), and they reminisce about the halcyon days at the papers, the liquid lunches, the curmudgeonly editors who always make me think of Garry Marshall in Never Been Kissed. And it seems like there's nowhere to go but down. And yes, bloggers have their place, and newspapers are businesses, but it's troubling to have fewer and fewer actual journalists writing smart, thoughtful, unbiased pieces.
Somehow, though, our local weekly newspaper keeps on chugging, and it doesn't seem that the star reporters leaving more prestigious papers are flocking there. For example, the weekly's political reporter consistently gets congressional committees' names wrong, and subcommittee chairs' titles wrong (she almost always makes our local congressman chair of the full committee, rather than the health subcommittee, although I doubt that he or any of his staff are rushing to correct her on that). Part of it is sloppy reporting; part of it is sloppy editing. I can overlook the occasional typo or grammatical error (well, okay, I can't overlook it -- I grew up spending every weekend morning taking turns with my dad to read aloud clips from the local daily, outraged by how many egregious mistakes went unchecked in every edition -- but I can forgive it), and there are half a dozen corrections of fact in reputable papers every day (hey, even People sometimes gets it wrong!). It happens.
But I think that our local paper's editor has just totally given up. If I may make another How I Met Your Mother reference, it's like when Robin kept saying wildly inappropriate things in her local TV news stories and got away with it because no one paid attention. Here, I'm not sure if the editor is lazy, or making some kind of protest statement, but the opinion page is kind of out of control.
A recent letter-- not in the April Fool's edition -- implored our state's lawmakers to change Middlesex County's name to Middle County, on account of the "sex" part being dirty. I wish I were making this up.
And this week, there's a screed about no-bid contracts, but the author's panties are mostly in a bunch because he doesn't agree with the successful applicant on a project that was, in fact, put out for bid. He twice uses the term "collusion-like," concluding: "The governor needs to be removed from office for his most secretive and collusion-like of administrations that this state has ever seen."
I don't know; maybe the editor just feels worn down by the volume of idiotic letters, and he figures, "Hey, why not? I'll just run this one verbatim, because no one sane has written this week, and I need to fill the page." I actually get that instinct, if that's really what's behind all the madness on the opinion page. But I fear that it's not, and it might make me even more depressed about the state of journalism, and of my little neighborhood, which seems increasingly filled with illiterate crazy-heads.
Somehow, though, our local weekly newspaper keeps on chugging, and it doesn't seem that the star reporters leaving more prestigious papers are flocking there. For example, the weekly's political reporter consistently gets congressional committees' names wrong, and subcommittee chairs' titles wrong (she almost always makes our local congressman chair of the full committee, rather than the health subcommittee, although I doubt that he or any of his staff are rushing to correct her on that). Part of it is sloppy reporting; part of it is sloppy editing. I can overlook the occasional typo or grammatical error (well, okay, I can't overlook it -- I grew up spending every weekend morning taking turns with my dad to read aloud clips from the local daily, outraged by how many egregious mistakes went unchecked in every edition -- but I can forgive it), and there are half a dozen corrections of fact in reputable papers every day (hey, even People sometimes gets it wrong!). It happens.
But I think that our local paper's editor has just totally given up. If I may make another How I Met Your Mother reference, it's like when Robin kept saying wildly inappropriate things in her local TV news stories and got away with it because no one paid attention. Here, I'm not sure if the editor is lazy, or making some kind of protest statement, but the opinion page is kind of out of control.
A recent letter-- not in the April Fool's edition -- implored our state's lawmakers to change Middlesex County's name to Middle County, on account of the "sex" part being dirty. I wish I were making this up.
And this week, there's a screed about no-bid contracts, but the author's panties are mostly in a bunch because he doesn't agree with the successful applicant on a project that was, in fact, put out for bid. He twice uses the term "collusion-like," concluding: "The governor needs to be removed from office for his most secretive and collusion-like of administrations that this state has ever seen."
I don't know; maybe the editor just feels worn down by the volume of idiotic letters, and he figures, "Hey, why not? I'll just run this one verbatim, because no one sane has written this week, and I need to fill the page." I actually get that instinct, if that's really what's behind all the madness on the opinion page. But I fear that it's not, and it might make me even more depressed about the state of journalism, and of my little neighborhood, which seems increasingly filled with illiterate crazy-heads.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home