Tag: daily hampshire gazette

By Posted on Posted in media-general, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

My local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, ran a brilliant editorial, “The GOP’s Ship of Fools,” on who’s responsible for the idiotic and totally avoidable government shutdown.

Here’s a little piece:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor led reporters into a room Monday and showed them an empty table, suggesting that if only Democrats and the president were willing to talk, the government would not have been hours from a new fiscal year without a budget. Do not be fooled. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats were about to get what they wanted — a government shutdown. Do not be fooled. Senate Leader Harry Reid observed that McConnell (R-Absurdistan) was channeling “1984” author George Orwell as his speechwriter, so upside down was his logic.

Want to read the whole thing? You’ll find it at gazettenet.com/home/8759377-95/editorial-the-gops-ship-of-fools —I recommend that you read it.

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Interesting piece in the Washington Spectator, noting that the Anniston (Alabama) Star seems to be doing reasonably well, even as big-city papers around the country move to Internet-only or shut their doors entirely. Even the Boston Globe is teetering.

In my own area, I read the Daily Hampshire Gazette, published in Northampton, Massachusetts for over 200 years. Northampton is a town of about 30,000; the whole county had only 152,251 in the 2000 census.

Yet, despite a proliferation of local online advertising channels and a tough economy, the Gazette seems to be doing well also. The parent company has even acquired several newspapers recently, and the Gazette also publishes a growing number niche magazines.

Early on, the paper decided it would not cannibalize print with its web edition; many of the stories (especially the local news stuff that would be hard to get elsewhere) are behind a firewall, available only to paid subscribers. Oddly enough, I notice that the link to the Spectator story is also subscriber-only. Hmmm–can this model work? The Wall Street Journal abandoned it, but clearly traditional print journalism is not doing well in a world of free content from professional journalists.

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