Editor & Publisher was good to me

Editor & Publisher magazine bills itself as “the bible of the newspaper industry” in an on-line article today announcing its own demise. For 125 years the magazine has been a tool of the trade and I’ve been a reader for about 40 of those years.

Even now I check the on-line edition almost daily for news of the industry. Back in the day, I was a subscriber and I checked the classifieds each week for job leads because it was the best - virtually the only - national newspaper jobs list.

E&P has been good to me. In the late 60’s and early 70’s it ran my articles on Advocate innovations, including one on the design and construction of the Advocate’s unique and expansive photo labs and studio in the old building on West Main Street. It also featured articles I wrote on the Advocate’s universal desk system. This was before newsroom computerization when “universal desk” was some kind of a murky goal held by lots of editors who seemed unable to make it work.

The Advocate’s system for handling the flow of editorial content received broad recognition, thanks to E&P. Later, I wrote and self-published (by using a Memeograph machine) a booklet on this subject and E&P added to the list of books it sold. Sales were surprisingly good.

The magazine also featured some of my studies in certain kinds of newspaper photos and at various times showcased the Advocate’s pictures as illustrations of what was happening in photojournalism.

Ironic, though, that in the end E&P was snared by the same kind of economic trap that is killing off newspapers. It’s all about profits; not service, not pride.

But then E&P editors themselves on many occasions flunked as technicians and as thinkers, in my opinion. Among the most glaring example of this was the series of columns by Steve Outing, who calls himself a media “thought leader.” Steve never uses two words where three paragraphs will fit, a true annoyance in a trade mag that should know how to use language. Among Outing’s leadership essays was the announcement that he had cancelled his printed newspaper and was sucking up free on-line news. He used this to illustrate his theory (with which I disagree) that printed newspapers are unnecessary and will all die off.

Maybe such “leadership” on the pages of E&P has influenced the overall health of newspapers, many of them struggling for life. I suspect it is the overall health of newspapers that came back to bite “the bible of the newspaper industry.” I hope E&P editors will see the irony if, as seems probable, whatever replaces E&P turns out to be an on-line version.

Nasty comments turned off in Knoxville

New tools aid in policing web comments ...

... that’s the headline for a report by Editor & Publisher magazine which would be good reading for anyone interested in stopping rampant nastiness by local commenters.

It tells how the Knoxville Tennessee News Sentinel was forced to begin policing comments with the help of users.

Among changes was the requirement for real e-mail addresses that can be traced; encouraging reporters to read comments on their stories and respond; and not allowing comments for every article.

A newspaper spokesman said, "We became ruthless about deleting the mean [comments] and banning the trolls. We just tightened up. Our number of comments did go down when we became more aggressive."

In Connecticut, one group of newspapers temporarily disabled the reader comments function altogether.

This is the link to the E&P article.

Birth of the Fifth Estate

The Washington Post publisher recently planned to sell seats - for as much as $250,000 each - at a private meeting between lobbyists and federal government officials with some of the paper’s journalists attending.

The thought of such an affair is abhorrent to principled journalists. It guts the concept of the “Fourth Estate,” which is the notion that because the press keeps an eye on government officials they will conduct themselves honorably.

That the Post would stoop to such depths says much about the reality of Big Publishers being in bed with Big Government which has for many decades already been in bed with Big Business. It magnifies the degree to which the news organizations have abandoned consumers, and explains why readers and viewers are jumping ship. We already could sense that Washington and Columbus press corps is a con job under direction of corporate money managers. Here’s Exhibit A.

Exposure of this fiasco was a media milestone, but it has gone virtually unreported. A search of the Advocate and Dispatch archives came up blank. Nor was much if anything made of it anywhere that I saw except Editor & Publisher reports. No big deal to the media.

Once it was so exposed the Post called it off and surprising to me were on-line commenters to follow-up reports (in E&P, I think). Many were media people concerned not by degree of self-serving arrogance in the Post affair, but with advice to the Post about damage control.

Perhaps the most important thing about this is that it was exposed not by the establishment press, but by Politico.com - by bloggers. The 7/2/09 report is at this link.

This apparently means that now we have a Fifth Estate - a machine to keep us aware of how worthless the Fourth Estate has become.

WCLT prospers under family ownership

A few decades ago the competition for news between the Advocate and the radio stations was pretty hot, at least as viewed from behind the walls of the newspaper. Fur was bound to fly on rare occasions when Advocate reporters got scooped.

All that faded, at least as far as has been evident to newspaper readers. The Advocate apparently gave up on being timely when the deadlines and press times shifted. WCLT wasn’t offering much news anyway, judging by its on-line news summary.

The return of Bill Clifford, WCLT reporter from the old days, may turn up the heat on the big boys at the Advocate. Bill is now the station’s News Operations Manager and since his return I’ve noticed a change in the number of local stories being broken on radio rather than print.

Bill’s many years of news experience and community involvement also place the station at an advantage in recognizing trends and the historical backgrounding of current events.

Though Bill heads a 2.5-person news department, it is very aggressive, he says. “I love competing in the news business. As long as I am at WCLT, my friends at The Advocate should look over their shoulder now and then ... we’ll be there.”

I like that.

I also like the fact that Spencer family members are among owners of WCLT. Brothers Frank and John Spencer who owned the Advocate when I worked there, started WCLT in 1947. Frank died and John sold the Advocate to Thomson Newspapers, which sold it to Gannett.

But the family held onto WCLT, though they’ve had numerous offers to sell to big corporations, which would likely cut staff and expenses to the bones. This is the link to an FCC report that lists WCLT owners.

WCLT FM is number-one position in listeners in Licking, Muskingum, and Knox counties, according to Clifford. WCLT sales are about $3 million according to Manta.com.

I can’t locate the official Aribtron ratings for WCLT as compared to five years ago, but the Advocate’s circulation went from about 22,000 copies a day five years ago to 15,585 as of 3/31/09, according to Clifford and the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It was more than 25,000 in the early 60’s, when I first worked there.

I’m glad Bill came back. Not only can he find the news, he gives us information we don’t get elsewhere.

Citizen journalists, please step forward

This morning’s E&P report that Gannett is set to lay off another 1,000 employees could bode badly for Advocate readers. Local managers likely won’t/can’t announce who’s to get axed, if anyone, and what that will mean to its already-bare-bones but ever-more-costly printed product.

I sympathize with middle managers and staffers, and I get no pleasure from writing about how the Gannett machine has strangled a once-fat, family-owned, rock-solid community newspaper. Maybe the Spencer family couldn’t have dealt today’s economy either, but their money would have stayed here, not gone to feed demanding stockholders and expensive corporate machinery.

Will the Gannett/Advocate survive? Or will we see a replay of local shops cranking up small presses and peddling them on Main Street? Whatever the outcome, I believe the urge to report and read printed local information will never diminish.

Meantime, there has never been a better opening for citizen reporters with on-line journals. I am reminded of that by bloggers who already write informative - albeit biased - reports on public meetings. The information provided is often the only report available and almost invariably adds dimension, whether you like that particular dimension or not.

Though it may not be likely, it’s not impossible for a cadre of civic-minded writers to arise and fill the cracks where professional reporters can’t go. County Commissioners’ meetings, court proceedings, township trustees’ meetings, school board meetings, city council committee meetings, Heath council and its committee meetings, public hearings of all categories, and the list extends to the boundaries of public affairs.

Such a movement could be facilitated by adult-education-level courses designed to help would-be citizen journalists learn to sift fact from opinion while building confidence.

Advocate closes gate on masturbators

My own comment to my own essay entitled “Advocate rubs our noses in homosex” published at the Advocate site was strangely offensive to the moralistic editors who routinely publish lush homo-promos as family fare.

I had responded to the comment of NerkBuckeye when he suggested that the Advocate should publish “sexual preference announcements. Then anyone could contact the Advocate and they can announce whether they are gay or straight - or if they are ‘switching teams.’”

My response took that idea to a new level when I suggested that such announcements should also include masturbators - who is and who isn’t. Further, I opined, that if we happened on a Newark City Schools board president who masturbated openly as a means to “new freedom” (in the manner of the former NCS board president who came out of the closet on Page One) then the Advocate could likewise feature the masturbating school official in another Page One story.

Does anyone find it telling that this comment was trashed by Advocate gatekeepers?

Questions on gasoline prices for Obama

What determines the price of gasoline is a question that for years I've been asking media representatives, public agencies, and government officials, including the Bush administration. I have yet to receive an answer or a show of interest.

I hope President Obama's policies of government transparency don't stop where the interests of energy profits begin.

If they don't, I will receive answers to the questions I asked of him today:

What and who determines oil prices?

How does lack of anti-trust-law enforcement affect those prices?

Who is in charge of setting prices at the pump?

What influences traders in the futures markets and who is guarding against price manipulation at that level?

Legislators, amputate this taxpayer tit

Now that the editorial clout of newspapers is a thing of the past, maybe Ohio legislators will have the courage to cut off the taxpayer tit defined as “legal advertising.” It was always an overkill in costly verbiage; today it is foolish waste.

It has always been overkill because of the unnecessary requirement to reproduce the lawyer talk which - as anyone who’s ever tried to read this stuff can easily determine - is virtually incomprehensible and, except for the barest summary, is unnecessary. Take, for example, surveyor descriptions in foreclosure ads. Beefcake for newspaper publishers; available by reference to court records to anyone who needs it. That’s a decades-long rip-off by newspapers, paid for by taxes, courtesy of politicians.

These days it’s an abundantly apparent waste because it can and should - for easier access and comprehension - be published at no charge to taxpayers on the web.

USA Today published an article about the trend that will eventually amputate this taxpayer tit. Read it here.

Ohio legislators can now safely support it, because newspaper readers are jumping ship and the ship’s editorialists are passing gas to empty pews.

Garish ads strike out

Blinking, screaming, annoying, trashy web-site ads finally drove me away from my customary pursuit of the morning’s news. 

Attempting to read through the firestorms set up by the Advocate and by MSNBC was like trying to read while looking into the lighting effects of a rock band. In spite of that, I wasn’t the least curious about the brassy advertisers or their messages so, in addition to annoying me, they also wasted a lot of money.

Here’s a perfect example of greed defeating itself. If they keep it up, if they improve on the crassness, maybe they can drive readers back to print and TV screens.

Big Brother, stop trying to be a parent

When are newspapers editorialists and legislators going to learn you can't legislate morality?

The latest media darling - “sexting” - is today’s excuse for more government interference into private lives and government control of the masses.

What the media herd is calling “sexting” is the fault of parents who won’t control their kids’ activities. The cure is for parents to confiscate their kids’ phones, not try to get laws to determine what kids may or may not do with their cell phones.

Anyway, why should a youngster believe that seeing nude pictures of anyone of any age is a bad thing? On television they see nude pictures with only the nipples, penises and butt cracks fuzzed out; on television see women preaching that “size DOES matter;” in magazines see older adults patting each other down because Viagra rules, also with ads for videos teaching the “art of oral sex;” and they’re only a mouse click away from reading about the “top lesbian sexual fantasies.”

All this government and media involvement should be aimed, instead, at the huge and all-pervasive sex-oriented industries which are in everyone’s face at every turn. As for children, they are still the responsibility of parents, not government.

Kids don’t need cell phones. Recognize that and you’re halfway there.

Butt out, Big Brother.

Is this the death spiral of newspapers?

Gannett’s second round of furloughs is the lead story in today’s on-line Editor & Publisher (also reported in today’s Advocate). E&P’s home page listed serious financial woes of Advance Newspapers, Newhouse Papers, Charlotte Observer, San Antonio Express, Lexington Herald-Leader, Star Ledger, Tucson Citizen, Memphis Commercial Appeal, and the Champaign News-Gazette. All that reported today.

When the apparent death spiral bottoms out, what will be left? Among those who say nothing will be left of newspapers except their on-line mortuaries is one of the E&P columnists who stopped his newspaper subscription months ago.

I disagree. Printed news will survive, perhaps in a way I suggested 12/30/08 (Newspapers, dump the herd mentality and save thyselves).

It may be too late now, but had newspapers changed their “business model” a few years ago to accommodate the obvious differences between on-line offerings and that which is sold on newsprint, I believe they’d be much better off.

I feel sorry for Gannett’s local employees, particularly news staffers who seem to be working at local news reportage in what must be a very difficult, anti-productive environment. Nobody told me that, but I’ve weathered similar newsroom situations and I think they are recognizable from afar.

But I don’t feel sorry for Gannett, the giant that sucked the blood out of truly successful newspapers like the Advocate so that it might use the money to buy up what remained of its competitors - and expand the empire at what appears to have been reckless speed.

I wrote 2/19/07 (A level field is bad for newspapers) “... the local Gannett-owned newspaper has been doing the exact opposite of what is normally preached to advertisers: if business is down, spend more to get it back. Instead, Gannett in Newark has killed off its daily television schedule and TV column. It has all but dismantled entirely its weekly "Booster," a once-beloved paper whose history goes way back before Gannett bought its way into Central Ohio. The Advocate is skinnied down, some days, to newsletter size.

“Gannett is getting beat. Gannett is getting beat because it is a corporation headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. In spite of its 46% gross margin in 2005, it can't afford pretense at full news coverage.

“Gannett is getting beat because its real interests are in a far-off corporation and not this or any other particular community. It gets no allegiance because it gives none.”

One might hope for the day when all the media-holding companies will go under, opening the way for lots of little guys with ambition and guts to open little newspapers which have to compete for customers of news and advertising. But no. If it ever got to that point, big government will bail out big media with taxpayer dollars, just has it has for banks, automakers, insurers and others.

Death spiral or not, newspaper readers are - and will remain - patsies of the system.

Jean Carrelli - special in every way

Another once-close-to-me reporter has joined the growing heavenly corps of old-school journalists from Newark. Jean Carrelli, whose name was for years a familiar byline, died yesterday, 1/13/09, after one of those wretched, heart-breaking illnesses.

Jean was diminutive (5 ft. 1 in.) and humble, but she reached far and deep with her humanistic-oriented newspaper reports and spoke to the multitudes - many times, over many years, for the Advocate, Ace News, Our Town, and maybe others.

Jean migrated from England to the U.S. as the wife of Al Carrelli when he was in the Air Force. I loved her accent; maybe it was Cockney, I'm not sure, but it was one of the sweet fringe benefits of my job.

I hired Jean away from her job at the (Heath) Ace News in April, 1977, where she had been making $2.50 per hour. We paid her $130 a week. Two years later, she confided to me that John Ashbrook, a publisher of local weeklies, offered her $200 a week, but she preferred to work for the Advocate.

She covered the Heath beat, wrote various columns, worked the copy desk, did general reporting and edited the Church Page. She was respected by her news contacts, people like Bill Mason, a Newark Schools administrator, who wrote that she "is the nicest, most personable school reporter we've had in 10 years."

Jean loved and lived her job - early, late, whatever it took. She was a news horse like few others I've known and special in every way. She's earned her rest and my most heart-felt thanks for a job well-done.

Gary Smith, old-school photojournalist - admired by many - dies at work

Gary Smith is the kind of guy you could never say enough good things about - among them, his dedication to photojournalism. Gary was at his newspaper job when he died of an apparent heart attack at age 62 after being in the trenches about 37 years.

Anybody who was reading the Advocate during the years of 1972 (when I hired him as an intern) and 1986 (when he took a job with the Maryland Independent) will remember the photographic excellence he brought to the paper. In '72, Gary was working on a master's in photography at Ohio University. We hired him as intern for $95 a week, and later he came on full-time, likely at not much more money.

The years that followed were the glory days for local photojournalism because we had not only Gary, but two other top gunners - John Allee and Joy Ream.

I've kept bits of information about former employees on file, and I found in Gary's folder this morning a note to me from Jim Underwood, who was in 1977 the Advocate news editor. It praised Gary's coverage of late-breaking news on a fire at Newark Convalescent and Nursing Inn.

The fire broke out about 10:35 a.m. and our final deadline was 11. Jim monitored fire runs and police calls on an old annoying CB radio by his desk and beeped Gary who was on the scene within minutes.

"Right after arriving on the scene, Gary phoned in the first report, and the first draft was in the typewriter before the firemen had the situation under control," Jim wrote. "We went to work on the initial story before the 11 a.m. deadline. Three graphs into the rewrite, I received a follow-up report from Joy (Ream), who had somehow managed to shoot the pictures, grab some more details, and even get a statement from Chief Bader.

"As a result of their fast work one of the major breaking stories of the day made it down to the shop around 11:45 - a little over an hour after the Fire Department received the call from the nursing home.

"I bring this to your attention because I believe it demonstrates the kind of people we have working here. Gary and Joy's handling of the situation was exemplary. They have demonstrated once again what real professionalism can mean to a newsroom."

That's just one little story among many that Advocate co-workers and readers could tell about Gary's dedication and hard work.

He was held in similarly high regard by the people he served in Maryland, judging by the Independent's report on his death.

Gary grew up in Zanesville, was Vietnam veteran, a dedicated family man and a devout Christian. He's the kind of guy who made the world a better place, and I'm proud that he remained my friend through all these years.

Get in line for our tax money, buggy-whip makers

That the Bush/U.S. Congress rape of America is alive and well and evermore destructive is reflected in today's news that our money will be also given to companies deemed by government to be important to making and financing of cars, according to USA Today.

This in addition to billions going to Wall Street traders, banks, and auto manufacturers.

And guess who is next in line? Newspapers! Already a Connecticut lawmaker wants to "save" his local newspaper. This, the most bizarre twist in the most bizarre use of tax money of all time, is reported by Reuters at this link.

If anyone is expecting this federal idiocy to stop soon, it isn't likely. At least not until the last of the businesses have been rewarded by Washington loonies with money from many generations of future taxpayers. The headline for that may read, as was written sarcastically by an Internet wag: "Buggy Whip Industry Demands Bailout - Claims $35B Will Allow It Time To Restructure."

Newspapers, dump the herd mentality and save thyselves

The Advocate yesterday proved itself willing to take a bashing in the name of free speech when it published my blog entry "Newspaper customers deserve better." I doubted Gannett managers would be so First-Amendment oriented, but they proved me wrong. Some really good comments were added by readers too.

Something about contemporary print journalism that I don't think anybody understands is this: Why are publishers attempting to profit from a product they are throwing at my doorstep for $26.86 per three months, while, with the other hand, they are giving me without charge most of the same info on the Internet?

How long will it be before they understand they now have two products to SELL, each with distinct advantages?

I have for several years spent a good chunk of change (currently $25 per year) for a subscription to LiveJournal, which, before I started "blogging," I used as a creative writing outlet and an Internet meeting place with people who interest me. I scarcely write anything there anymore, but I still read about my friends and sometimes comment. So how much more valuable would be such a meeting place among local folks, assuming the web site were as skillfully designed and as convenient to use as LJ?

Then what if you added to that web site a truly well-designed, 24-hours-per-day news report with constant updates that would keep folks returning throughout the day and evening?

Then what if you added a good search engine to that site, one that would pull up local names and previously reported items?

And what if you offered many more useful databases than is being done already?

And a complete an easily searched library of back issues of the print edition?

And links and e-mail addresses to local government offices, agencies, and businesses?

And what if you promoted all of these features and gave the url's throughout the articles and ads in the print edition?

And what if you provided for advertisers in the print edition links to the web site where shoppers could go for detailed information and more pictures of individual retail products? Think of the advantage advertisers would have over those blinking annoying pieces of crap presently being stuck in web readers' faces.

If offered only that much on their web sites it would be worth a good chunk of change for a subscription - at least $50 a year to me.

On the other hand, my wife would pay nothing. She's not a computer person, but gives the printed Advocate a thorough read, while I scarcely give it a good skim, except for the classifieds and photos. So there's the rub for publishers. How do you serve - and profit from - both types of audience? And what can the print edition do that the web will never do, beside serve people like my wife?

A renaissance in classified advertising would greatly add to reader interest. Classifieds should be the common man's marketplace and it would be if they again became affordable. Publishers should use them as loss leaders for print versions only.

Other advertising that can be handled only by print versions is legal advertising and delivery of inserts which is also a readership a draw for shoppers like my wife.

Something else that cannot be handled on the web is photojournalism - words and pictures used in combination to add dimension to the subject matter. There isn't - and never will be - enough room on the computer screen to display good photos and layouts.

Then there are certain types of reading matter that don't have a timeliness and can be deferred to the print version and only there. 1) Well-conceived and well-written and tightly edited and interesting feature items, local and syndicated; 2) Daily TV schedule; 3) The day's community calendar; 4) State and national government coverage to include each vote by local senators and representatives - plus synopses of bills passing though the statehouse and congress and state and federal courts; 5) News analysis; 6) Editorials; 7) Columnists - to include columns by local reporters and editors; and 8) Comics - and likely much more that could be used in schools as teaching tools.

All of these are basic to newspaper reader interest and worth money if professionally conceived and presented.

Newspaper profitability is a matter of getting rid of herd mentality that says newspaper web sites should be a free version of the print edition.

Newspaper customers deserve better

When USA Today was born, it was a new concept in selling information. It was dressed differently than other newspapers and it talked differently. It did what seemed almost impossible: it established itself as essential reading to many thousands of buyers throughout the country.

Soon thereafter publishers of lesser papers across the country started to imitate USA Today in format and chatty, vastly overwritten, "feature-ized" and downright poorly written news reports. Gannett, meanwhile, bought many of these lesser papers, including the Advocate of Newark Ohio.

Consolidation is an objective among big publishers, as it is for big businesses of all stripes. The result is a new efficiency that eliminates employees. Another objective is buying competing businesses, as Gannett has done locally, giving it a monopoly in this region. Monopoly status allows corporate-level thinkers to think of new ways to squeeze their customers.

As one example of the Advocate's progress, consider what happens when you visit that business to purchase a pricey classified ad. You are pointed to a chair and a telephone there in the lobby so that you may call someone at God knows where so that you may place your ad - and then you wait to get a human on the phone while the few visible Advocate employees chat among themselves.

That's a long stretch from the days when Betty Hoover, the operator-receptionist, would greet visitors with a pretty smile and direct classified customers across the hall where Elsie Howard would treat you like royalty and advise you on the best and least-expensive wording and placement for your ad.

To corporate-level group-thinkers, it's not the customer's perception of this process that matters, it's whether the newspaper has extracted a pretty penny with minimum expenditure for good employees.

This attitude is exactly what's ailing newspapers today. It didn't begin happening as the present recession started. It began much earlier when corporate efficiency inspired ever-bolder ways to sell newspaper readers as little as possible for the same or greater prices.

Anyone who's read the Advocate for more than a few years can remember seeing features and niceties drop by the wayside. This and that and the other fell overboard. Quality photojournalism went quickly because it's expensive - but so did the more mundane features that require either news space (e.g. the daily television schedule) or cash outlay (e.g. quality columnists). Each of these omissions provided another reason for folks to drop subscriptions and for advertisers to go elsewhere.

The payoff for that attitude among corporate-level group-thinkers in the newspaper industry is reflected in reports by Editor & Publisher:

6/9/08 - "Stock in Gannett, which publishes USA Today, has lost roughly half its value in the last year, as the newspaper industry has struggled with declining revenue and circulation."

6/11/08 - UPDATE: Gannett Freezes Employee Pensions, Ups 401(k)

6/29/08 - Newspapers, reeling from slumping ads, slash jobs

6/30/08 - 'Plain Dealer' Cuts 32 Pages Per Week, Drops Four Sections

6/30/08 - Ventura Paper Latest to 'Reinvent' Itself -- Admits Cost Cutting, Not 'Better' Paper, Is Aim

7/2/08 - L.A. Times Cuts 250 Jobs, 15% of Pages

7/16/08 - "At USA TODAY, advertising revenues declined 16.6 percent in the second quarter compared to the year ago quarter. Paid advertising pages totaled 831 compared with 1,034 in the same quarter of 2007."

I am a steady reader of the on-line Editor & Publisher. If ever corporate group-think is showcased as it affects newspaper readers, E&P is the place: the perfect spot to observe the newspaper industry devoid of good ideas for improving its products.

While the Advocate has vastly improved its local news report in recent months, it still reflects too few people trying to cover an entire county, but that's exactly where the USA Today model and corporate journalism have taken us. Now, with the economy sliding backward, maybe the group-thinkers will have to reflect on the needs and desires of customers.

Bankers probably should stick to banking

In his pump-up of Newark Schools and Keith Richards, Dan DeLawder took special pains to offer a kick in the pants to the Advocate. It appeared today in the letters column.

DeLawder, a banker by trade, offered this journalistic critique:

"I was happy to see your paper provide such positive coverage, especially since I have been gravely concerned with your publishing focus that too often fails to report good news and accomplishments but is quick with glaring headlines that point out deficiencies and areas for improvement. I assure you I am not alone in that assessment."

I suspect that he and other community boosters would indeed prefer the time not many months ago when the Advocate editorial department was no more than an arm of the Chamber of Commerce and a mouthpiece for government officials.

It was that kind of crappy journalism that infuriated me and anyone else who understands what a newspaper should be. In those days it was people like me who were crabbing about worthless newsprint coming off the local presses.

The favored class of Licking County can't bear to look at itself honestly and have public problems discussed in public. But this is not new; it's a tradition in Newark that I have personally experienced, one for which there is no education.

But as a journalist I can report here that DeLawder's comment is off the wall. Today's Advocate is better editorially than it's been for many years, which is why I rarely go gunning for it myself.

The whiteness of McCain eludes media

It isn't just Advocate staffers who are fascinated with Obama's race. Consider the lead on the Washington Post's racist report on his nomination:

Sen. Barack Obama, the first African American to lead a major-party ticket, accepted the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night, sharply criticizing Republican John McCain and casting the election as "our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive."

In the interest of balance, it should also mention McCain's whiteness - for instance: "... criticizing John McCain, life-long white person, and casting ..."

On Thursday 8/28/08, Associated Press referred to Obama's color in the first sentence of its racist report on his nomination. On Friday a report by GNS, whatever that is, ran at the top of the Advocate's page one. The first sentence of that racist report referred to Obama's color.

In that same edition on page one is where the Advocate published its racist article on how "black community members" feel about Obama.

I asked in Advocate on-line comments: Will the Advocate have a story on the whiteness of McCain? How proud whites are that he's a candidate? Nobody is whiter than McCain. Do you think you're doing blacks a favor by keeping the race issue up front? Will there ever be a time when media will let America forget the various colors of skin, none of which, by the way, are black or white?

If media can't let go of the race issue, let them at least be fair enough to mention whiteness at every opportunity. News reporters obviously feel the need to keep people aware of how important is the issue of skin color, but they should have the decency to direct their racism at more than just "blacks."

EDIT: Here's a comment I added in my Advocate blog to the above text:

I don't think this is a conscious attempt to be unfair. It is a tradition that needs to be broken so we can become Americans, rather than folks who supposedly belong to "black communities" and the remainder of citizens who don't. Just this kind of media blather is what keeps "black communities" separate and somehow different. The inspiration for the news reports I quoted, I think, is to sort of praise Obama for his achievement in spite of his "blackness." He doesn't need that crap and neither should anyone els

Sites for sore eyes

If you like to look at photos, or if you study photo-editing techniques, the very best of the best galleries are, in my opinion, those at the Washington Post site. From this web page you can link to various galleries. The "Day in Photos" gallery is a place I visit daily.

What sets these galleries apart from almost all other photo displays you see on the web or in print is the selection of interesting photos that are well-composed and cropped to perfection. This is a textbook photo site produced with uncommon expertise.

Also, for web-site-building expertise, and for editing copy for web readership, visit the site of The Week Magazine.

This one has broken free of the box in which other news sites seem confined because they can't quit copying one another - and they invariably are difficult to read and navigate. The Week site should be on copy writers' editors' and web designers' must-read list.

You'll find an amazing and visually riveting photo display at Jumping Boy web site. I mentioned this site a couple years ago when this young fellow was being photographed by his dad in a series of 365 jumping poses - one each day.

You'd think that project would have worn him out, but he kept on jumping and his web site has grown even more interesting. Likely if you visit, you'll get hooked too.

The best site (I know of) for a clean, clear, to-the-minute news update is this:

United Press International

Better than Drudge by far. This is where I go first and most often.