| There has been self indulgent back patting sessions at the Daily Astorian and the East Oregon Publishing Company over their series on climate change and the environment. It seems disingenuous for a business that uses gross amounts of pulp, fuel and natural resources to call all the other kettles black. If the Daily Astorian wanted to walk the walk they should reduce their newspaper to a weekly publication. Consider all the paper they use and all the fuel they use to distribute this paper five days a week. This came to mind after looking at the Daily Astorian the other day. There was local news on the front page, maybe 1/10th of page 2 had any local content, 1/3 of page 3 had local content, and page 11 had 80% news. Summing it up there was slightly more than two pages of local news of which one quarter was fluff. I recently read through a copy of the Chinook Observer, a weekly paper which is owned by the same company as the Daily Astorian. This paper had substance and a good professional look about. It contained a weeks worth of news which seemed much more substantial than the Astorian and its scant daily effort even when all five days are combined. The Astorian can counter and say their readers need the news on a daily basis, where in actuality it is the Astorian that needs the daily ad revenue from five day a week publication. This paper is obsolete moments after they publish. Their online presence is more useful for up-to-the-moment news, though the effort of northcoastoregon.com, with a smaller staff and fewer resources out-scoops the local standard on a daily basis. The Astorian may also be afraid to disturb the steady stream of biased journalism and propaganda that they use to dictate their vision to the readers along with the manipulation they inflict upon the local political climate. The Daily Astorian will probably never reduce their production to save the environment or to put out a better publication. It is a shame. How long can they suffer a declining readership before they decide something needs to be changed? | ||||
5 comments:
The Daily A also shoots itself in the foot by making much of its online content available to paid subscribers only. The Washington Post, one of the largest papers in the world, makes all of its content available online for free, all one need do is a one-time registration. The hard copy is still worth its weight in coupons and such, but if someone in Boise wants to read the paper they can do so for free online.
BTW, it's also fairly simple to bypass the requirement for accessing what should be paid-for online content of the Daily A. For instance, the link to the article "County ponders which local media should be allowed in secret sessions" on today's front page takes a non-paid-subscriber to a page where it says "Subscriber Only Access." However, the article is available at this link: County ponders which local media should be allowed in secret sessions, no payment required.
Thanks Rich!
Also, did you notice, the Daily Astorian just went up to 75 cents! JEEEEEEZ!
Do you think that Forrester's going to increase his reporters and other staffs' pay, though?
"Reporters are a dime a dozen."--Steve Forrester
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I think you titled this a little wrong. It should have read, "Weekly too Weakly".
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