Anyone familiar with the plight of newspapers knows how we have entered an era in which fewer and fewer Americans read hard copy anymore (if they can actually read), and that the Web is the place to go. The later is the case since many blogs and online media postings don’t require the kind of lengthy perusals that might cut into the surfer’s requisite cell phone blathering time.
So it was with trepidation that Phillipe & Jorge read in the Urinal about how Journal Register Co. is considering selling many of its local newspapers in the region. This includes reliable news outlets that have done some considerable community service. Anyone trying to get info out to the public has long realized that many people read their local rag first and foremost. These readers can probably tell you whose dog ran away and who was arrested for speeding in town more readily than they could find Baghdad or Jerusalem on a world map.
Journal Register’s local organs include the Times of Pawtucket, the Call of Woonsocket, the Kent County Daily Times of West Warwick and the Herald News of Fall River, Massachusetts, as well as a bunch of weeklies.
Casa Diablo always worries when local media outlets are put up for sale. Why? Can you say “Belo Corporation,” boys and girls? An absentee owner, Belo has been sucking the Other Paper dry ever since acquiring it in 1997. Although broader trends certainly play a role, it’s far easier for Texas suits to cut distant jobs when they don’t have to worry about encountering angry employees (or readers) at the local market or at a Little League game.
P&J have had the distinct pleasure over the years of working with editors and reporters at virtually all the newspapers in Journal Register’s increasingly dysfunctional family. They are dedicated and hardworking, and our fingers remain crossed concerning their future.
Boulder damned
Think Mary Lacy, the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, is having a good time these days?
Boulder officials screwed up the still-unsolved investigation of JonBenet Ramsey in every way possible. Led by Ms. Lacy, they took the cake by arresting and extraditing Ed Grimley impersonator John Mark Karr from Thailand, his pants belt at Nixon level and a vacant look in his eyes, because he claims he was involved in Ramsey’s death.
Of course, once Mr. Karr was returned to Boulder, his DNA didn’t match any of that at the crime scene. Oops.
The only bright side in this media circus is how it turned attention to child predators and their ilk. It also turns attention back to those parents who obscenely dress up their elementary school-age children (JonBenet was six at her time of death), putting more makeup on them than that worn by a Las Vegas showgirl, and entering them in skin-curdling “beauty pageants.” Why don’t these disgusting, frustrated adults cut to the chase by teaching their kids pole-dancing when they turn eight?
The real senate rebel
Since old-time Vo Dilun Republicans do not seem enamored of Steve “Laugh at Me” Laffey (hope you caught the recent TV debates. Does the word “arrogance” come to mind?), to whom, exactly, is the Laffster trying to appeal? Why, it’s the rebels — those who somehow believe that a first-term US senator is going to arrive and inform the rest of the chamber how to conduct its business.
