In light of my MPSIMS thread about Katherine Graham’s demise, I’m wondering about your local newspaper. Do you read it? Is it any good?
I am creature of habit, and I have to read the paper everyone morning, even if it is the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The news coverage isn’t too bad, but the editorial policy is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. I gave up reading the editorial page for a while, it almost seemed that the paper was taking a reactionary position just to do so…sort of a “let’s see how outrageously conservative we can be today.” I’ve since tempered my reaction to it and now view it as an opportunity to see what the lunatic fringe is thinking. I guess that explains why I read George Will’s column. I also read the Washington Post’s online version and its Sunday edition.
The newspaper I grew up with, The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA, is a wonderful paper for its size and has garnered national honors. The news coverage is first rate, the production and layout are clear, the editorial policy balanced.
Oh, I read the same one you read…but I only read it on Sundays. If I read that bilge every day I’d be too pissed off to function. “Slighty to the right of Atilla the Hun” is putting it mildly.
I always liked the book review guy in the Richmond paper. What’s his name again?
Oh, and I read the New York Times and the New York Daily News daily. The former just because, and the latter to get actual LOCAL news coverage…the Times pretty much limits its local beat to the Upper East Side, with occasional frightened peeks across the Park to the Upper West Side…and the funny pages, of course.
The New York Post isn’t even an option. About ten years ago, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance did a bumpersticker campaign in response to some homophobic editorials in that paper, pasting up AREN’T YOU TOO INTELLIGENT TO READ THE NEW YORK POST? all over town. Still can’t look at the paper without remembering that.
The Wall Street Journal? No, thanks, not for me.
Used to read the weekly Village Voice back when it cost a buck, but quit when it went free; the quality dropped precipitously. I still read the NYPress, mainly for Cecil’s column, but it occasionally has some interesting cultural essays. I figure if I’m going to read an dopey-opinionated, crappily-written weekly paper, I should read a right-wing one instead of a left-wing one, so I can continue to feel smug about my personal belief system.
As it happens, my local paper is the Washington Post. I read the online edition daily, and the print edition on the weekends. Their international coverage, IMO, is especially good, and they do a lot of local coverage as well. I also check out the Washington City Paper, our alternative newsweekly, on Thursdays. Their political coverage borders on the hysterical, but they do report on a lot of interesting local issues and have good entertainment writers.
No matter what the Post’s weaknesses, though, they would have to fall a long way to be as bad as my old local paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer. That paper is a rag.
When we were living in King George, I read the F’burg Free-Lance Star on a daily basis. Since returning to Jax, I subscribed to the Times-Union for a little while, but I found I was putting most of it into recycling without cracking a page. So I stopped my delivery and I pretty much get my news from several papers on line.
Oh, yeah, and the Times-Union is somewhat to the right of right… another reason I’m looking forward to the day I can leave this town.
You mean the Daily Reactionary Fascist Rag That Puts Its Damn Loony Editorials on The Front Page and in Every Article, er, the Daily Oklahoman? No way. I don’t even line the birdcage with them anymore. For the same buck-fi’ty I can get the much thicker and almost as John Birchy Dallas Morning News. Squirt, squirt, birdy.
Sounds like the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, owned by non other than Rupert Murdoch. My dad gets it for the local news-thank god we also get the Post-Gazette or I’d go nuts.
Do I read my local paper? Only on weekends, and if it weren’t such an ingrained habit to read the paper on weekend mornings, I probably wouldn’t even read it then. We subscribe weekends-only so my wife can get the coupons out of the Sunday paper.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is, by any standard, pretty awful. What bugs me most about it these days isn’t the editorial stance but the dreadful quality of the writing and editing. I’ve begun to believe that they have people on staff to introduce solecisms and typos into any story that doesn’t come from the reporters with them; it’s the only way to explain their ubiquity. I lost it completely one Sunday in reading a feature story about the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, when I encountered a pull quote that, taken out of context as it was, gave one the exact opposite impression from that conveyed by reading the same quote in the body of the story. Deadline pressure wouldn’t wash as an excuse in this case: this was a feature, one that had likely been in the can for several days before that section went to press. It just didn’t get caught by the editors, and the only possible explanation is that they were either too stupid to realize what they were reading or they didn’t read it at all. I can hardly make it through a story without encountering some serious lapse in logic, mangled idiom, wooly-headed metaphor ineptly handled, or cliched expression infelicitously adapted to the case in question. And the typos – just this weekend they contrived to misspell “Atlanta”, not in body copy but in a large table comparing recent Olympic cities on the front page of the sports section.
My only real alternative is the Gwinnett Daily Post, not a lot better than the Journal-Constitution, but marginally better. Unfortunately, because we live almost on top of the Gwinnett-DeKalb county line, our zip code is in the Daily Post’s circulation management system as being in DeKalb County, so they won’t deliver to our address – I’d have to get it by mail, at least a day or so late, and I’m insufficiently motivated to make a trip to the nearest convenience store to buy it in the morning.
It’s symptomatic of the problems newspapers are having that the people most accustomed to reading a paper every day, who actually care to take the time and effort to do so, are the ones most likely to be put off by the shoddy way many papers are written and edited these days.