Here in Shasta County, CA our news was bought out by the USA group BUT a local journalist named Annalise Pierce started the Shasta Scout, an independent hepaper. She goes to most meeting of the MAGA county superintendent councils, and reports on how they are gutting county government.
She has rooted out important corruption and shady deals in school boards, city government. We are so blessed to have her.
THAT'S the reason that I stopped subscribing to MY local "rag!!!" Even the online E-edition!! And DON'T get me started on their "print" edition!!! There's not enough "paper" to line the bottom of a small birdcage!!! But the price ...... DOES keep going up and up and UP!!!
The same has happened to the century plus year old Las Vegas (NM) Optic, since Gannet bought it. Once a 5 day per week fint of local news for the northeast, very rural, corner of our state, it is now a Friday only 6 page amalgum of ads, obituaries, and maybe a single article about a trial, or social event. Meanwhile its price rose from $.25 to $1.00. Nowhere is there any actual local "news", like what, just a few days ago, started a grass fire on the edge of last year's humongous wildfire burn scar. No wonder we as a nation can't talk to one another, only shout obscenities. We are uniformly uninformed.
I was shocked this week when our Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal, a once-proud flagship paper, published an actual opinion piece. They did away with the award-winning editor's desk several years ago.
I too am among those who quit the print copies of newspapers when four years ago, after 50+ years of always receiving a newspaper at home, did not renew my subscription. The deterioration was as Jim describes but I also tired of the editorials and letters to the editor that were printed about the right to own an AR-15, Jesus and the Bible, anti-abortion diatribes and why we needed a southern wall.
I have digital subscriptions to the Detroit and Louisville papers but only for the sports news and sports columnists. The monthly is less than $1 for each but I know I will not renew those either. I have been told that I do not give them pre-notice to cancel then next year’s bill will be charged in advance and each will cost more than 3x as much.
So glad we have the internet despite the “inconvenience “ of mining for legitimate and sane news opinions and discourse. The other thing I had to learn is how to find the grocery stores with the best sales and coupons each week. I never have broken that habit ingrained in me growing up and from my own lean days.
I am a long time fan of your, Jim, but have a real axe to grind when it comes to the media. I happen to be one who has chosen not to take the COVID vaxx for the reason that I think there were other ways to address the virus--but the media absolutely, and to this day, refuses to allow information regarding these alternative protocols to be discussed. This appears to be with full blessing and even collusion of the Biden Admin. This is how I see it. But on to something that we can both agree on and that I have been writing you for months, asking for your support. This concerns the National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) legislation that is making its way through congress. Because I know you are a train enthusiast and one of the new infrastructure possibilities that could be funded by the NIB is a high speed rail system that our country badly needs--I would love to see you put your golden tongue to work in support of this very creative way of repairing old decaying infrastructure and creating new and needed as well. Not only would this make all the badly needed repairs but it would put people who have lost their jobs during lockdown back to work--a win/win situation. Please at least take a look at this creative way of funding infrastructure without raising the federal debt. NIBcoalition.com
This is exactly what has happened to our local newspaper in Fayetteville, NC. The Fayetteville Observer which has been continuously published since 1816 in this town except for a brief period during the Civil War. Recently closed the local printing press and the newspaper is now being printed in another town. Like your article the newspaper is thinner and infiltrated with a lot non local stories. There are just a few local stories that allow it to be called a local newspaper.
When our Local Newspaper closed, our Community was sad and No one knew what was going on locally. But People United- a group of Locals got together and started a Newspaper run by Volunteers! The Community responses - more Volunteers, Paid Subscribers,Local Advertisers- and Now a few salaried employees and of course Volunteers and supportive Community. Check out kingsbury journal.com. I am sure they would be glad to give you advise on starting your own local paper. Think Co-op ! Think People Power! Keep
The same thing is happening to local radio, courtesy of iHeart Media and Audacy (not the name I was trying to think of): small staffs, canned content provided by the central organization, and lots of profit to the corporate owner.
I was a newspaper boy in the early 1970s in Hudson, Massachusetts. I delivered the Boston Globe, the South Middlesex News, and the Hudson Daily Sun - I was rich. My Sunday Globes weighed more than I did. Historians in the near future are not going to have a chronicle of local news to use as sources. This unwritten history is a real loss. No newspaper clippings of the high school football team championship, no letters to the editor eulogizing the lifetime fire chief who suddenly died, no announcements of the Garden Club’s annual luncheon. Not recording history makes it so much easier to make up history later on. The problem can and needs to be reversed.
Here in Shasta County, CA our news was bought out by the USA group BUT a local journalist named Annalise Pierce started the Shasta Scout, an independent hepaper. She goes to most meeting of the MAGA county superintendent councils, and reports on how they are gutting county government.
She has rooted out important corruption and shady deals in school boards, city government. We are so blessed to have her.
THAT'S the reason that I stopped subscribing to MY local "rag!!!" Even the online E-edition!! And DON'T get me started on their "print" edition!!! There's not enough "paper" to line the bottom of a small birdcage!!! But the price ...... DOES keep going up and up and UP!!!
/SHEESH/
The same has happened to the century plus year old Las Vegas (NM) Optic, since Gannet bought it. Once a 5 day per week fint of local news for the northeast, very rural, corner of our state, it is now a Friday only 6 page amalgum of ads, obituaries, and maybe a single article about a trial, or social event. Meanwhile its price rose from $.25 to $1.00. Nowhere is there any actual local "news", like what, just a few days ago, started a grass fire on the edge of last year's humongous wildfire burn scar. No wonder we as a nation can't talk to one another, only shout obscenities. We are uniformly uninformed.
I was shocked this week when our Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal, a once-proud flagship paper, published an actual opinion piece. They did away with the award-winning editor's desk several years ago.
I too am among those who quit the print copies of newspapers when four years ago, after 50+ years of always receiving a newspaper at home, did not renew my subscription. The deterioration was as Jim describes but I also tired of the editorials and letters to the editor that were printed about the right to own an AR-15, Jesus and the Bible, anti-abortion diatribes and why we needed a southern wall.
I have digital subscriptions to the Detroit and Louisville papers but only for the sports news and sports columnists. The monthly is less than $1 for each but I know I will not renew those either. I have been told that I do not give them pre-notice to cancel then next year’s bill will be charged in advance and each will cost more than 3x as much.
So glad we have the internet despite the “inconvenience “ of mining for legitimate and sane news opinions and discourse. The other thing I had to learn is how to find the grocery stores with the best sales and coupons each week. I never have broken that habit ingrained in me growing up and from my own lean days.
I am a long time fan of your, Jim, but have a real axe to grind when it comes to the media. I happen to be one who has chosen not to take the COVID vaxx for the reason that I think there were other ways to address the virus--but the media absolutely, and to this day, refuses to allow information regarding these alternative protocols to be discussed. This appears to be with full blessing and even collusion of the Biden Admin. This is how I see it. But on to something that we can both agree on and that I have been writing you for months, asking for your support. This concerns the National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) legislation that is making its way through congress. Because I know you are a train enthusiast and one of the new infrastructure possibilities that could be funded by the NIB is a high speed rail system that our country badly needs--I would love to see you put your golden tongue to work in support of this very creative way of repairing old decaying infrastructure and creating new and needed as well. Not only would this make all the badly needed repairs but it would put people who have lost their jobs during lockdown back to work--a win/win situation. Please at least take a look at this creative way of funding infrastructure without raising the federal debt. NIBcoalition.com
This is exactly what has happened to our local newspaper in Fayetteville, NC. The Fayetteville Observer which has been continuously published since 1816 in this town except for a brief period during the Civil War. Recently closed the local printing press and the newspaper is now being printed in another town. Like your article the newspaper is thinner and infiltrated with a lot non local stories. There are just a few local stories that allow it to be called a local newspaper.
When our Local Newspaper closed, our Community was sad and No one knew what was going on locally. But People United- a group of Locals got together and started a Newspaper run by Volunteers! The Community responses - more Volunteers, Paid Subscribers,Local Advertisers- and Now a few salaried employees and of course Volunteers and supportive Community. Check out kingsbury journal.com. I am sure they would be glad to give you advise on starting your own local paper. Think Co-op ! Think People Power! Keep
The same thing is happening to local radio, courtesy of iHeart Media and Audacy (not the name I was trying to think of): small staffs, canned content provided by the central organization, and lots of profit to the corporate owner.
I was a newspaper boy in the early 1970s in Hudson, Massachusetts. I delivered the Boston Globe, the South Middlesex News, and the Hudson Daily Sun - I was rich. My Sunday Globes weighed more than I did. Historians in the near future are not going to have a chronicle of local news to use as sources. This unwritten history is a real loss. No newspaper clippings of the high school football team championship, no letters to the editor eulogizing the lifetime fire chief who suddenly died, no announcements of the Garden Club’s annual luncheon. Not recording history makes it so much easier to make up history later on. The problem can and needs to be reversed.