Posted on 07/19/2009 10:04:52 AM PDT by martin_fierro
As I leave, I remember why I do this
by Chuck Anderson
Ill be moving to Oregon in a few days after a few years at the editorial helm of the Press-Banner. Im going from one local weekly paper to another, the Wallowa County Chieftain in Enterprise, in the far northeastern corner of the state.
Wallowa County, where cattle outnumber humans and Republicans outnumber Democrats, is a little different from our twin valleys.
But the game called community journalism is the same. Wallowa County depends on the Chieftain, the countys only newspaper other than a daily published in a neighboring county.
In my office here, every day we receive volumes of news releases about events and subjects outside our area. We toss them in the recycling bin. My mantra ever since I first sat in the editors chair has been All local, all the time.
Thats why, as I recently told Tom Honig, former editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, most weekly papers will survive the turmoil that has gripped our larger daily brethren: Because the weeklies publish news overlooked by the dailies, TV and the Internet.
As a result, while you can stop reading the Chronicle and get your fix of national and international news on the Internet and TV, its rare that any local news on our pages makes CNN.
You might find it on Yahoo! News, Google News or others of the so-called news aggregators. Thats only because they prowl weeklies Web sites, swiping what weve devoted time and resources to reporting. Without newspapers and AP and Reuters news services, pickings on Google News would be slim indeed.
When you read or hear about the downfall of the newspaper industry, remember that they arent considering the nations thousands of community weeklies. Sure, even small weeklies have felt the pinch of the recession and responded accordingly. A few have even closed.
But competition from TV and the Internet has never been much of a concern for the weeklies. As I told my new staff in Enterprise, community news presented on newsprint isnt about to die.
Chuck probably thought himself pretty sly making the highlighted sentence. Who's gonna see it, right?
Couple of questions for ol' Chuck:
Oregon/Media Schadenfreude/Cruzio PING
I love how the liberals flee the destruction they have wrought.
The Kaleefornication of ORegon continues!
I know.. I live in Portland.. but from Umatilla County in the eastern half the state..
“But the game called community journalism is the same.”
IOW, he’s fleeing the cesspool created by leftism to infect a new place with his leftism. /SPIT
The same is happening with the Duluth News Tribune up here in Duluth, Minnesota. Lots of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth, yet they despise anything conservative, and actually work to silence the rights voice in their so-called on-line blog. The liberals seem unable to understand (or maybe they do?) that their continual push toward the Left brings only the fall of those they claim to serve. If liberals actually did have a brain, they’d see what is being done in their name.
Also because:
People, like ol’ Chuck, are like the homeless. They despoil their environment and then when it so filthy and dirty to be unlivable, they move on to another environment to inflict their despoiling activities on it.
Problem is that they then bring it to us.
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.
Is that one of the tree killing junk papers from the Santa Cruz area???
Sure, even small weeklies have felt the pinch of the recession and responded accordingly. A few have even closed.
The more, the better.
They all belong to a national communist network of scuzzbag weaklies.
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