by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

Having vented about the idiocy of their "survey" in the previous post, I fired off an email to the address given by the newspaper for comments upon the survey. Tonight I got my email returned because it was "undeliverable". What? Undeliverable? Hmmm....odd....Until I scrolled down to find the reason it was undeliverable. Seems the mailbox was at capacity. This is a newspaper which has a weekly section devoted to all things computer and Internet. And their cyber-survey email mailbox is kicking back email because it is full!

Now comes the cautionary tale. Once upon a time, this newspaper was a locally owned and run affair. In fact, when I was a lad, it was an afternoon paper which was distributed by legions of young men (and some young ladies) on bicylces and on foot. Then, sometime...I think it was in the sixties, but I could be wrong...after I had grown and moved away from New Jersey's Queen city (that was how the town billed itself in those days) it was sold to the Gannett chain. In the intervening years, it has moved away from the town of its birth to become a "regional" paper. All I can say is that joining the Gannett chain has turned a pretty good local newspaper into a slightly less than mediocre newspaper. The staff is composed almost entirely (it seems) by people either on the way up or on the way down. It is, in other words, just a way station in most of its staffs' careers. Sure, there are a couple reporters and/or columnists who are local to this area and have some sense of community, but they are in the minority. My wife seems to think the local news is worth all the other nasty crap we have to put up with. I think, however, that the next time the Star Ledger calls with a trial subscription offer, I'm gonna take it. Oh, the cautionary part of this is that the trend towards the concentration of ownership of the media, whether print or electronic, is not a good thing. In fact, I would argue that the trend for consolidating ownership of much of our economy is not a good thing. Back in the sixties, we were chanting "Small is beautiful." We should rekindle that chant here in the 21st century.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005