The average unobservant Courant reader may not notice that today’s wire news section — now called BeyondCT — was made entirely in Chicago.
That’s not as bad as India, perhaps. After all, like a pint, the wire news is wire news the world around. Does it matter if the stories were selected by someone who can see Lake Michigan out the office window? Through the magic of the Internet, the international report on Broad Street is the same as the one on Wacker Drive.
One thing for sure, though: the paper that has won awards as being the best designed in the world, will not be getting any points this year for stylistic consistency.
Take a look for yourself:
Unless I’ve lost my senses, this page is done with “down style” heads. Hmmm. Where have we seen those before in The Courant?
Hint: nowhere.
So I guess this gives new meaning to the expression “Beyond CT.”
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Besides looking a bit off, the insult is that the local papers (THC, that is) are compelled to accept Chicago’s wisdom as to what national news will be displayed, and how. If the Courant wanted to do a bigger spread on, say, the Justice Ginsburg illness, tough luck. With nearly no space whatever for national/international except on the canned pages, a local paper has no voice whatever in what its readers will get except what is handed to them from several time zones away. All this to save … what? Same newsprint. Someone still has to monitor it to ensure that the paper doesn’t duplicate things. It’s all wires anyway so no savings there.
Not a good idea.
denis
It saves some wire editor/copy editor/layout editor hours — maybe even a salary or two over time.
True. A salary Tribune won’t be paying to one of our friends, most likely.