I am glad to see that a newspaper of general circulation opted to cover the Mark Twain House event: “The Death of My News Is Greatly Exaggerated.”
No surprise it was the New Britain Herald, a subject of the documentary film that preceded a panel discussion that included Naedine Hazell, editor of The Courant.
If anyone cares anymore, Naedine added another quote to the nearly defunct debate whether The Courant and Fox 61 TV are separate news organizations editorially — a concern among a shrinking group of people that used to include State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and now only includes Journal Inquirer Editor Chris Powell.
“They are us, we are them,” Herald writer James Craven reported her saying.
More importantly, perhaps, the combination gives both entities a better chance of surviving what now appears a permanent trend away from dead tree journalism.
As far as I can tell, The Courant did not report on the Twain House event. The documentary film On Deadline will be aired on CPTV tonight at 8 p.m. and again on Friday, March 5, at 10 p.m.
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I’ve noticed that since the Fox-Courant affair started, the Courant’s content has become increasingly sensationalist and tawdry. Today’s online issue featured, on the front page, photos from Maxim; that’s just want I want in a “family” news publication. Right. And on the Courant’s front web page – the space is devoted to crime, shootings, fights, death, scandal, celebrity gossip, “weird” news — anything to generate clicks from those who seek titillation. One has to dig DEEPLY into the site to find anything that’s not death and destruction. This is deeply disappointing. I canceled my subscription because the Courant’s content was no longer relevant to my life as a normal person living and working in CT.
To Sarah’s comment that the Courant’s content has become increasingly “sensationalist and tawdry,” I would point to a sampling of articles that ran on the front pages of both the print and web editions of the paper this week:
–The possibility of a strike at the state’s dominant supermarket chain
–A well-written and affirming feature on a local couple’s work in Haiti
–A look at polices regarding school bus seat belts
–Two nights of debates between the candidates locked in a high-stakes race for U.S. Senate
–An analysis of the local housing market
–An investigation into safety violations and lavish renovations at the flagship state university
–A public policy debate over Keno
–The future of wind power in the state
Hardly death and destruction and certainly “relevant to…a normal person living and working in Connecticut.”
And I would argue that two “death and destruction” that dominated both web and print — another woman killed as a result of domestic abuse and issues surrounding the treatment of one of the men implicated in the state’s most notorious homicides – each have enormous public policy repercussions for state residents.
But I guess Sarah wouldn’t know that, since she boasts of cancelling her subscription.
FYI: Excerpts from the Mark Twain House panel were on John Dankosky’s Where We Live yesterday. It included, along with Naedine: Mike Schroeder and Steve Collins from the Bristol Press (which figured heavily in the documentary, On Deadline: Is Time Running Our for the Press? by John and Rosemary O’Neill, shown before the panel);Keith Phaneuf from CTMirror.org; and Christine Stuart from CTNewsJunkie.com.
You can hear it at http://www.cpbn.org/?q=node/37. There’s an interview with Bob Woodward at the start, and the panel picks up at the 18-minute point.
The documentary itself, which is a good snappy treatment of the topic that should make everyone misty-eyed about their local papers, will be aired tonight (Friday March 5) at 10:00 p.m. on CPTV, as you mention. It has some good lines, such as “Information may want to be free, but reporters want to be paid” (or words to that effect).
Full disclosure/boast: I organized the thing, and I think it turned out really well.
Most disturbing in the panel discussion was Naedine’s commentary that viewer clicks and “most e-mailed” are determining the top stories of the day.