Bad Day

I'm in Connecticut this week, and the entire top half of the front page of the Thursday edition of New London's newspaper, The Day, is taken up with a large photo of the devastation from the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, along with a headline consisting entirely of a dramatic survivor's quote: "Just Dropping, Dropping."

And my question is: Why?

Yes, the bridge collapse is huge news. That's why it's being carried on every possible national media outlet: TV network news, cable news, radio, Web news. Why on earth is it front page news in New London, Conn.? It's available everywhere else imaginable, and The Day, with an AP story and picture, is adding zero—ZERO—value for its readers. The only possible local angle I can think of on this first-day story is that New London has a large interstate highway bridge of its own, but of course, the story doesn't touch on that at all. Nope, this is just a local paper jumping mindlessly onto a national news story that readers can find in countless other media.

This is precisely what's wrong with the thinking in a lot of newsrooms today. They're still locked into the mindset that they're the only source of news for their readers, as if TV, radio and the Web don't exist. The "newspaper of record" fantasy. Forget it. That's been over for years.

If newspapers like The Day really want to serve their readers, their front pages should have local news, stuff that readers can't get anywhere else. Period. Stop wasting newsprint and readers' time reporting news that's available elsewhere.

The Day's front page also boasts that it's the "2007 New England Newspaper of the Year." It's a pretty safe bet it didn't win that award for carrying news from Minnesota.

Comments

[Charlie Barthold]

Here is an idea -- use the space instead for a listing of local gas stations and what they charge for fuel. In fact, go a step further and put a similar chart online and allow readers to input prices. (A gas price wiki.) Do not stop there. Do this for other commodities in town that we all shop for and would like a better price on -- laundered shirts, hamburger, you name it.

[Rocky]

I *almost* bought the Post the day after. I looked at the newspaper box, saw the picture, thought about it and then the voice in my head said "You were just watching this on CNN and reading about it online. It's all old."

[kpaul mallasch]

This is soooo true. They're just now finally getting rid of stock pages, etc.

-kpaul