Sunday, August 28, 2011

Are newspapers obsolete?

The Counties of North JerseyImage via Wikipedia
The counties of North Jersey.



My copy of the The Record of Woodland Park wasn't delivered today, but when I looked at the e-Edition online, all I saw was stale news of Irene, the storm that soaked and flooded North Jersey and ended around 10 this morning.


North Jersey waits, wonders


What kind of Page 1 headline is that, Editor Francis Scandale? 

No. Absolutely not. North Jersey isn't waiting for Irene. The steady rain started around 5:30 Saturday evening.

By this morning, small branches littered my property. My kitchen ceiling sprung a leak in the middle of the night Saturday, and my garage was flooded with runoff from my garden around the same time.

Maybe, newspapers are obsolete, if this is the best they can do on a developing weather story. Should I forget the printed paper and the e-Edition, and go online to northjersey.com for the latest news?

But I've always hated the North Jersey Media Group Web site. It's difficult to navigate and looks like shit. I can never find anything on it.

Today's paper

On the front of Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais exposes friends of business owners and people who are paid to write peer reviews for TripAdvisor.com and other sites (B-1).

On the front of Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung reports on the Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, where the birds are raised naturally on a vegetarian diet and without antibiotics (F-1).

But isn't this a contradiction for Ung, a restaurant reviewer who rarely mentions whether the poultry and meat she samples have been raised naturally?

Kelly headed to D.C.?

On the front of Opinion, Columnist Mike Kelly is the latest reporter to  speculate on whether Governor Christie is going to run for president (O-1). 

Tens of thousands of readers are rooting for Christie to leave New Jersey and take Kelly with him as a mouthpiece.

Above the Kelly column, a huge piece on "Jersey Shore" makes you wonder who is hurting the state's image more: the moronic cast of the so-called reality show, the governor or the columnist.

Litter patrol

Desperate to avoid writing about commuting problems, Road Warrior John Cichowski reports on the littering of a footbridge between two malls (L-1).

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes managed to come up with major local news for L-2: the Dean's List.

L-3 today is filled with non-profit news, which usually appears on Monday.

What will appear in that space on Monday, a page of non-fatal accident photos?


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7 comments:

  1. I think you mean Saturday, not Sunday, in your first two references. Better fix it before the peanut gallery starts hurtling epithets your way.

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  2. You're right. I've been up since 4:30. Don't know what day it is.

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  3. What does litter on a foot bridge have to do with road warriors? More like a column for the foot warrior. Time to put this column out of it's misery

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  4. John Cichowski has barricaded himself in the newsroom, and taken Editor Deirdre Sykes hostage.

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  5. Newspapers are not dead. How else would we know what happened yesterday after we learned about it the day before on radio, TV, Twitter and actual real-time local websites?

    Re: Jersey Shore: I keep telling you, Victor. Borg loves any NJ-based reality stars. He thinks they bring the demo he's looking for (he forgets that they don't actually read anything that isn't on a screen).

    And since he is not Italian (in fact nobody on his board of directors is except Scandale), no harm done, right? Imagine if those shows were about Armenians.

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  6. After Sunday's post, The Road Warrior column should be renamed Litter Patrol. How absolutely useless.

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