Cementing its growing reputation as a broadsheet newspaper flaunting tabloid sensationalism of the National Inquirer ilk,the Erie Times-News ran a page one story Sunday above the fold at the right top of the page with a 42 point headline explicating a seedy sex triangle involving a low-level administrator at the North East Borough office.
In the meantime, the newspaper's editors and reporters ignore other far more important local governance stories in which top-level part-time, paid borough officials with roaring conflicts of interest routinely stiff North East, state and federal taxpayers of millions of dollars for gold-plated utility projects in order to pad their own professional fees.
Here is Times-News Sex Reporter Gerry Weiss's lead paragraph, straight out of STAR-type-tabloids:
"The North East Borough manager is being investigated by state police on allegations of criminal trespassing after his former girlfriend accused him of having sex with his estranged wife in the lover's apartment." It only gets worse
I ask you, could Weiss's lead have been more titillating? Or more irrelevant? While the subject of the piece is indeed the borough manager, in North East Borough's mercenary pecking order, his responsibilities and salary are barely above the level of a clerk typist.
With mind-numbing detail, Weiss quotes directly from a search warrant, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
Putting out Sunday's newspaper on Saturday post meridian, the slowest news day of the week, is always a challenge for news editors. But the Weiss sex-fest represents a new low in Times-News annals where the norm usually scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
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2 comments:
Joe:
Any thoughts on newspaper's responsibilities in the changing media landscape. As sales of tabloid style publications soar, even as newspaper sales dwindle, doesn't it make sense for the Times to go this route?
Ralph - Thanks for your feedback. In my opinion, it's precisely the mainstream print news media's journalistic descent to the level of the lowest common denominator that accounts for their diminishing ad sales and circulation. Take the Wall St. Journal. Journalistically, it's the best, most successful newspaper in the land and farthest removed from the tabloid model.
Given the special protections newspapers and the press in general receive from the First Amendment, they have a responsibility to balance concerns for the bottom line with sociocultural obligations to the broad public interest. That means they must compromise their profits rather than maximize them in order to fulfill their public trust.
By the way, I've tried to post on your blog several times, but it keeps telling me my password is incorrect and rejects them. I couldn't find your e-mail address to tell you that.
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