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The local paper in my parents' town has done this as well. Their weekly local inserts have appeared on Wednesdays for as long as I can remember. Recently they started including their special weekend section on Thursdays instead of Fridays. They say it's so people will have an extra day to plan their weekends & so that the events on Friday would have better coverage, but I think it's also because they know that their special weekend entertainment supplement is very popular so they're going to use that to convince more people to sign up for daily subscriptions instead of just weekend subscriptions. No word on whether that has actually worked or not.
Plenty of newspapers really do have the weekend spotlight section in Thursday's paper, and the idea is so that the Friday events get more notice.
I read one too many N&O articles where the "journalist" (I use the term loosely) clearly had an agenda, found a one person case study to prove his point and applied that anecdotal evidence to the entire area. That paper, IMO, is an embarassment. I bought a Sunday paper for a while but eventually decided they didn't deserve my $1.50.
I don't regularly read the N&O so what you say could be true, but I wonder if you were reading an editorial or an opinion piece? It's pretty standard to get at least two sources! As this is a large metro area that would surprise me but I supposed anything's possible. Still a shame (to me) about all of the changes, that certainly won't improve coverage.
I don't regularly read the N&O so what you say could be true, but I wonder if you were reading an editorial or an opinion piece? It's pretty standard to get at least two sources! As this is a large metro area that would surprise me but I supposed anything's possible. Still a shame (to me) about all of the changes, that certainly won't improve coverage.
The one person case study remark was tongue in cheek. One example would be an article written the day after Thanksgiving 2007 about how the parking lots at the area malls were practically empty and the stores at TTC (I think) were doing almost no seasonal hiring. They found a few people to tell the story (that my guess the writer had come up with way before Black Friday) and made it sound like we were in another Great Depression. Christmas 2007 certainly wasn't spectacular for retail sales, but it was no where near as bad as this story was trying to make it either. I read many stories like this, all of which seemed to be to have been written by the writer and then the writer found the "facts" to support it. My guess is this type of journalism goes on all over (in fact I've read many AP stories like this), but there really didn't seem to be enough objective news in the N&O for my tastes.
I remember a headline a month or so ago: "NCSU's Harris fined for speeding". The actual newsworthy story was not that Harris got a speeding ticket, but that serious charges were dropped because the cop had no credibility. The actual article was fine, just the headline was strange and did not fit it. I emailed the writer and found out that the Editor had chosen the headline, which the writer agreed did not fit the story. I see junk like that all the time.
I have a pretty poor opinion of the N&O, having been around during the Jimmy V witchhunt. Some of the worst tabloid journalism I've ever seen.
The actual article was fine, just the headline was strange and did not fit it. I emailed the writer and found out that the Editor had chosen the headline, which the writer agreed did not fit the story. I see junk like that all the time.
I have a pretty poor opinion of the N&O, having been around during the Jimmy V witchhunt. Some of the worst tabloid journalism I've ever seen.
I hate when that happens with headlines. It happened to me a bunch of times too and it's really frustrating! Especially when you would have put that story in your clip file/portfolio *groan*
It is pretty standard practice that the person who wrote the story doesn't write the headline.
If I weren't addicted to the comics I would have quite the N&O years ago. The Jimmy V. crusade was horrible, but then the N&O has had it in for NCSU for years.
The N&O will carry on for paragraphs with the preconceived slant they want to present and offer a minor nod to the "other side" of the story in the last paragraph.
It might not be a bad idea to read the end of a story first.
Just dump it altogether and read it online. The only reason I can imagine getting it is for the coupons (if you are a coupon clipper!).
Well, some of us just like the "feel" of a newspaper...curling up in bed on a Sunday morning with a laptop just isn't the same, and I'd find it hard to take a laptop on the Stairmaster at the gym (or into the sauna) etc. I guess at 44 I'm officially an old fogey, but I like the feel and even smell of newsprint.
Newspapers are definitely suffering -- for many of the reasons listed above. One of the reasons I keep my subscription to the Durham-Herald is that the sports section is one of the few things my son willingly reads. I doubt that he would bother to look it up online though (he prefers YouTube) but when it's laying on the kitchen table he'll read it.
One thing I noted when I visited NJ recently was that the local paper there was chock full of local news -- including a large amount of coverage of youth sports and other local community news. That news included the type of items that you clip and save in scrapbooks. At the same time it also seemed fairly thick and full of advertising -- like the circulation hadn't dropped much. Wonder if our local papers shouldn't focus on that aspect a bit more.......
Last edited by durhammom; 08-06-2008 at 12:53 PM..
Reason: corrected grammar
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