I received this note from retired Star-Bulletin business writer Russ Lynch:
The New Haven Register seems to provide a pretty good example of the extra info you can get from checking out a local newspaper when there’s an event in its area attracting national attention. Nothing particular new today, but I regret not checking it out before today.
It is obvious that the local cops know the local reporters and are more relaxed with them than with the national newshounds.
I also thought it was interesting that the paper put the arrest documents online, including such info as the suspect’s Social Security number.
And I note that the Register did something pretty rare in newspapers these days, putting out an “Extra” print edition to cover the arrest in detail, peddling it on the streets.
Another reader pointed me towards a story by Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books, “A new horizon for news“.
Massing notes that there are positive signs about interest in the news product despite all the gloom of the newspaper industry today:
Yet amid all this gloom, statistics from the Internet suggest that interest in news has rarely been greater. According to one survey, Internet users in 2008 spent fifty-three minutes a week reading newspapers online, up from forty-one minutes in 2007. And the traffic at the top fifty news Web sites increased by 27 percent. While this growth cut across all age groups, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism found, “it was fueled in particular by young people.” The MTV generation, known for its indifference to news, has given way to the Obama generation, which craves it, and for an industry long reconciled to the idea of its customers dying off, the reengagement of America’s young offers a rare ray of hope.
Massings overview of the different models of news reporting being experimented with across the country does give some hope for the future.
And stocks of newspaper companies have suddenly become hot buys as signs emerge that advertisers are starting to return. The stock of Gannett, for example, fell below $2 per share back in March, but has risen five-fold since that time. Someone might have made a lot of money buying GCI stock when it seemed the world was ending.
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Remember, stocks go up and CEOs get bonuses after they successfully conduct layoffs. It’s probably too early to form conclusions on what Gannett’s increase in value means. Survival is good, but what does the product that we buy look like?
It’s great to hear that one newspaper cares enough to run an “Extra.” Here, I open the morning paper to find that the most important news might be that a condo is in foreclosure before it is built. Yes, there are more important stories for the top spot, but no, the newspaper is not able to deal with the real world, only with getting something out somehow each day.
So stock going up is not correlated with doing a good job, just with Wall Street recognition that stockholder profits have been preserved.
Is it legal to reveal a person’s social security number? It certainly does not seem ethical.