Posts Tagged ‘newspapers’

According to a just released Gallup poll a majority of our fellow citizens nationwide do not trust media to deliver fair, unbiased, and accurate reporting.  Newspapers and TV seem to generated the least amount of confidence in their content.  As a former television news producer it’s very disheartening, but not surprising.  I watch very little TV news myself these days and my local newspaper has more full page ads for prescription drugs than I’ve ever seen.

The news is not all bad for the news.  There are journalists around the country that are experimenting with ways to make news-gathering economically viable.  I think what they also need to do is make the news relevant and valuable.  If we don’t have access to credible information about our government and our civic and business communities, we’re all in serious trouble.

I love to read the newspaper, the old fashioned kind where you have to turn the pages.  I subscribed to both newspapers in Seattle to the very last day until the Seattle PI stopped publishing a physical paper and went on-line.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up this morning’s Seattle Times and saw the blaring headline “Grandma just shot them for no reason.”  I don’t quarrel with their editors’ news judgement.  Clearly that’s a big story. It’s the headline that knocked me back a bit. It’s copy I would expect to see on supermarket tabloid covers, not on my front doorstep, and not from a newspaper that touts under its masthead “Winner of a 2010 Pulitzer Prize.”

Come on Seattle Times people! I know you are under tremendous pressure to sell papers and the outlook for your survival publishing on paper may be bleak, but please don’t lower your standards.  That will just give the few of us remaining subscribers another reason to let you go.