The World of Mr. Newit

The Falling Standards of the News-Herald

Today’s paper annoyed me so I thought I’d write a crank letter to them. They are pretty good about such things. I’ll post if anything else comes of this.

I just wanted to pass on a brief note concerning the quality of the News-Herald. Firstly, I want you to succeed. I believe firmly that the local newspaper covering local news is an invaluable asset to a community. Lately, however, we have seen corners cut in the most obvious and amateurish ways. An amateurish product will not continue to be a viable product especially in the current newspaper business climate.

Recently the errors on the comics page have become rather pronounced. I can live with the Sunday comics stuffed onto a single sheet, even when the size and orientation of each comic is altered (perhaps some of the plentiful whitespace from the Announcements section could be brought further back in the paper). Unfortunately, though, recent papers have had the same comic run two days in a row (I believe it was a Non Sequitur), a repeat of a comic run a few days prior (Pardon My Planet) and today’s For Better or For Worse today was cropped incorrectly, cutting off dialog.

Another constant wonder is that the editorial cartoons are blurry. I understand that these are mostly scans of artwork created from outside your organization but their resizing does not need to render them a poor Rorschach. I do not see this same error in any other papers I read.

Finally, Bouquets and Brickbats is a sad joke. I realize that it is important and effective for local news to highlight the good things that local people have done. But the Brickbats are just a waste. The barbs are either hilarious rants about world nutters (the dictator of Venezuela is probably not on your mailing list) or also ran status stories blown up to preposterous proportions (this week’s rant against an old guy digging in the street is not exactly Earth shatteringly important). Either have something pointed to say about some issue close to home or just make it a limp-wristed Bouquets section.

Now, you may look at the list of complaints above as just ranting about details. There is merit to that argument. However your industry is under siege by the decentralized news gathering found on the internet. Your biggest advantage is professionalism. Therefor my suggestion would be to either do these details correctly or jettison them. It is better to have a smaller, higher quality product than something quickly resembling a middle school newspaper.

Thank you for your time and if you would like to discuss this further do not hesitate to contact me.

Curmudgeonly yours,
Andy
Leroy Township

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 11:26. It is filed under Crank Rants!, Writings and tagged with complaint letter, News-Herald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.