Friday, May 08, 2009
HeraldTrib Today: May 7, 2009
I had a snarky piece already to go about how tough it was to find the Sun Gazette's coverage of its parent company's troubles on its web site.
(The parent, American Community Newspapers Inc., filed for Chapter 11 protection at the end of last month.)
But I see the coverage is on page 10 of the current print edition. Good. (I don't actually like being snarky it just makes us all defensive, and that's not a good position for journalists to be in.)
Scott McCaffrey, the Sun Gazette editor, has been covering his parent company's troubles, but only on his blog, which no doubt gets far less readership on the main news pages.
Here’s the really interesting part: in one of the blog posts, there’s a link to “read the story here”. It’s an actual news story that has a date stamp of April 29, but I went back to find it on the main site, and not there! So, the story exists, you just have to know to look for it. When you click the story, it says it is archived in "hot news." Was it posted there? Here, and only here, is the Sun Gazette story on line.
I wrote about the story last week. After I covered the story, I sent it to some area newsies who hadn’t heard (though I was nearly a week late in my coverage), and then I sent it along to my realtor (who I talk with or email daily) who said he hadn’t heard anything. He also said he would have liked to have known this as his office does a lot of advertising with the Sun Gazette (no kidding!).
People, in other words, seem interested in this as news, not banter, Scott. You probably should have made sure this story stayed on the main News site, not just on your blog.
By the way, Scott, I liked the first blog entry you posted yesterday with the headline: “That’s why you shouldn’t let amateurs loose in the newsroom." It got my snark way up! I was happy it hadn't been aimed at me. (In fact, you've been very nice to me and my blog lately. I'll admit it makes me nervous.)
And so that this joke isn't only inside baseball, Scott was poking at the Loudoun Times-Mirror which quoted its own staff in a story about the Sun Gazette's parent company filing for Chapter 11 protection. Unfortunately, the Loudoun paper apparently did not mention that the people quoted were their staff--reason enough to poke them.
When I went back to find the post for my own snark-filled reasons, at 9:13a.m., I found the post was was gone! At noon it came back on-line with a different headline and different content. (As Scott would say,“Whoopsie” —we’ve all hit “post” when we don't mean to.)
Today, the blog covers the same story (I think) but gets angry at the misspelling of the Sun Gazette's name.
If you read the actual newspaper, drink beer, and feed your kids beans from cans, you know what joy it is to get the big, blue recyclable canisters.
My family and I recycle everything we can—newspapers, envelopes, sheets of paper (including the 80 or more that come home every Friday in the kids’ folders), bottles, cans, plastics. We’re still unpacking, so we have corrugated and flat cardboard. Tissue boxes, toilet paper rolls, milk jugs. Everything. Pull the cardboard tag off a new shirt? Yup, into the recycle bin. This is something I’ve taken from Arlington Oaks. I was on the board and active in the community while there, so I know that recycled waste was cheaper to haul away than garbage destined for the landfill. So I did my part to save the condominium a few bucks a year. When I arrived at the new house about six blocks away (in Arlington Forest, aka “West Buckingham”), I found the yellow recycling bucket on the back porch, lacking. The sorry excuse for a container worthy of saving the environment had broken sides and was, at best, half the size of what we required. Because of its small and lidless design, on Wednesdays (just before garbage day) our back porch looked like a small landfill. I think the squirrels (stupid squirrels!) even took out some of the items hoping to find remaining food. But now, now we have reached recycling Nirvana! I am at peace and in love!
The students that I mention in my essay, below, are back together (didn’t see that coming). I was rather surprised, I’ll admit, that they broke up just in time for me to write the essay!
The race for the House of Delegates’ 47th District gets weirder by the minute. The chatter I have heard and read seems to leave people in the dark as to what the endorsement by POTUS-42 means. Turn out on June 9 for the Democratic primary will be the key, I’m guessing. Will an endorsement by the former Commander-in-Chief be enough? We’ll see…
The Week’s Headlines…
As always, you can scroll down to see all the recent stories, or simply click the links below (if the link doesn't work, scroll down to find the story, and email to tell me what's busted: heraldtrib@gmail.com --Steve Thurston).
Headlines from Earlier in the Week:
Public Service Announcements
Labels: 47th, environment, sun gazette
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