Why The News Journal Sucks!
I don’t know if you missed it, but DelawareLiberal has been mentioned in the News Journal twice in the past two weeks. Both times, we were trotted out to smack us around. The most egregious was the mention on Sunday about our recent change in personnel. The mention went out of its way to talk about little BS issues, rather than the things that really matter. For example, how hard would it have been to weave together the apparent unmasking of Kavips with the unmasking of a blogger by the courts earlier in the week? But instead, they would rather discuss stupid stuff.
The other mention seems trivial, but it is a little more insidious. Smitty saw it and pointed it out to us. The discussion of DL was that we were trading in baseless rumors. What was ignored was that the post in question went up at 6:25PM on August 6th. This was just minutes after we got the tip (it came in at 6:15). As the post was being typed, I was on the phone with the Coons administration to get confirmation. Coons’ office denied it outright and I let the team know that it had been denied. 21 minutes after the original post (and 30 minutes after the tip), we had updated the story and informed our readers.
Why misrepresent our reporting? How long does it take the News Journal to update their information? I just wonder if they are taking pot shots at us, or they just don’t understand how this series of tubes work?
Tags: Delaware Blogosphere, Local Media Sucks!, News Journal
Let’s just say they have an agenda….right or wRONg as that may be.
I didn’t read the story as “insidious” … more like “insider baseball”.
The NJ actually “blamed” WDEL near the top but then went on to point the finger at DL. I think the only snarky part of the story was when the NJ made protecting bloggers anonimity a bad thing, rather than a good thing: they either don’t understand the difference between blogging and journalism, or they don’t care.
If a political blog of any type managed to get the attention of the daily newspaper in my part of the planet, it would be considered a score for the blog. To create this much heat with a post that lasted 21 minutes is a definite win.
So congratulations are in order, DL!
I heard my services were needed in this post!
“they either don’t understand the difference between blogging and journalism, or they don’t care”
Exactly the problem with DL!
In the second article Angie Basiouny writes:
“The blog, Delaware Liberal, which prides itself on its anonymity…”
Which is dead wrong, but par for the course for the News Journal.
Nice work! no wonder you are failing.
What the fuck do you care? Nobody reads that piece of shit paper anyway…………………. according to you.
That is true, anon. There are hundreds of people in the state that have met me and know my identity, including News Journal reporters. I am not the International Man of Mystery that the News Journal would have you believe.
lg, I’d say that the combined NJ staff knows all the DL bloggers.
The Stooge Journal! Ha! They have lost so much readership (because they are so heavily corporate) their editorial page might as well be written by dupont, Merck, AstraZen…you get the picture.
Hmmmm…I doubt they know who I am.
I would attribute the loss of readership more to lack of content than of corporatism.
I think that the lack of content is a result of the kind of corporatism that just extracts value out of an organization, leaving it crippled to provide more content.
I wish newspapers would start thinking out of the box a little more and ditch their national section. That news is old by the time we get the paper and most of it we already know anyway. I wish the newspapers would provide more local and hyper-local coverage.
But UI–local and hyperlocal coverage actually has to be written by real people and actually costs real money.
Whereas they can just cut and paste AP stories that are already 18 hours old….
Great point UI–and a noted generational shift. Used to be we read the newspaper for the national stuff–the war, stock quotes, election, because we knew all the local stuff. Now we read it for the local stuff–points of interest, people of interest, and local topics of interest. Obituaries still hold a special place, but weddings have been greatly diminished. On a local note, just returned from Tempe, delivering college kids, and missed all of you. Now 30 years ago, you all (that was for you UI), would have known that–now you have to read it on a blog.
This is more proof that they’re scared shitless of you.
Angie Bassoon has a helluva lotta nerve slagging anyone — she couldn’t write her way out of a parking ticket, and the next time she writes something interesting on her New Castle County beat will be a first. They busted her down from assistant editor because she couldn’t do that job, and for the past several years she’s been proving she can’t do this one, either. But they’re always reluctant to shove a non-Caucasian out the door, because upper management bonuses are (or used to be) predicated on how many non-Caucasians were on the payroll.
“They have lost so much readership (because they are so heavily corporate) their editorial page might as well be written by dupont, Merck, AstraZen…you get the picture.”
Wrong. They have been heavily corporate for many, many years — they basically had a two-year “golden age” of quality journalism in the mid-70s that helped spur Christiana Securities (the du Pont family trust) to unload the papers, and the rest is a long, inglorious slog of mediocrity as Gannett put its journalism-killing formulas to the test. Nevertheless, the paper didn’t start losing readership until the whole industry started losing readership. No offense, but try restricting your comments to things you know something about.
Yeah, Joanne I have to say that I “know” more people than I used to, many of whom I’ve never met in person! Blogs and now facebook and twitter make us more connected in ways (less in others). I feel old saying this but I can see how much things have changed since I was a kid. When I was in high school we didn’t have the internet for research – we had the library. And your sources were your sources – whatever books or materials you could find about your subject. Now there are so many sources out there it’s hard to separate good ones from bad ones.
Used to subscribe to the News-Journal.
If it weren’t for Boscov’s ads, it would have been four pages long.
Now I get a paper that takes longer than five minutes to read.
I buy the News Journal on Sundays for two reason…the TV guide, and the comics (published under the heading; ‘Perspectives’).
tv guide? really? i didn’t think people used those anymore. tho the crossword was always right up my alley…. 🙂