local paper a lost cause?

Quite a few of the people with whom I speak regularly are now asking what I've heard about the local rag. I must confess that, now that the editor is no longer running the regular columns by local individuals, I have little or no interest in the daily goings-on of that publication.

It seems I am not alone in this sentiment. I have heard from at least a dozen long-time subscribers that they will not renew when their current subscription expires. "Why bother?" they remark. "If the editor's idea of 'improvement' is to print VERY BIG pictures to mask a lack of content, and to look at communities more than a hundred miles down the highway for 'local' events, the paper no longer meets our needs or holds our interest." At a hundred dollars per year, it's a pretty big chunk of change for something not even worthy of wrapping fish.

And, yet, the paper does occasionally provide me with amusement. For example, this week, the front page bore an article with this header: Schools gets grant . The day before, this article: What if Speck were held in jail?

To the first header mentioned, I grant that the article was quite clearly a press release, so the writing was fairly coherent. As long as nobody down at the paper tries to edit press releases they receive, they do seem to come out well. The latter link, though, has the usual convoluted lack of grasp of the English language for which the paper had long ago become famous:

["Spree killer" Richard] Speck was taken in for questioning in Warren County less than two months before the Chicago murders. What if Speck would have been held here instead of being released because he claimed to be ill?

In the case of both the headline and the above paragraph, we have a leetle teensy problem with tenses of verbs... If Speck were held in jail, he'd be mighty stinky by now, having bought the farm in 1991. If he had been held in Monmouth jail 42 years ago, things might have been different. As to the quoted graf, is it not more economical and accurate to ask, What if Speck had been held here, rather than released due to a claimed illness? Woulda, coulda, shoulda chopped the would.

And let us examine this other gem (emphasis mine):

However, according to the police records Speck managed to escape at least three investigations that involved homicides before committing one of the most heinous crimes in U.S. history. He could have been held in Texas and Indiana before going to Chicago.

Now, if he'd been held in Texas and Indiana, I'm pretty certain the courts would have had something disapproving to say about his dismemberment...

These sorts of stumbles come so frequently to the current DRA, I'm beginning to believe they're intentional, just to keep us snickering so much we won't notice the lack of local content (or, for that matter, any real content at all) to the local paper.


A few other choice tidbits, from other items, which got past the editor, (likely due to "underpaid, overworkedness" wink, wink, and an over-dependence upon SpellCheck):

1. County Clerk and Recorder Tina Conard said that if an increase in sales tax is passed, that the county would not begin to see those funds until as early as November 2009. The concern members of the committee expressed was that the county is currently in a deficit and does not have that long to wait.

2. Being understaffed, Edwards said he often finds his office playing the roll of news reporters instead of police officers.

3. Who needs to have radon tested in their home? [Contrary to the direction of the question, the article is not about testing radon, but testing for radon -lb]

I could go on all day, but there aren't that many articles printed in the local rag of which to make light.

I am grateful for the internet, these days, or I'd never learn what really happens in this sleepy little hamlet, for all the unintentional levity.

Update: Of course, I can't really blame the local rag for every gaffe. One of the news sites out of the Quad Cities ran this AP headline: Authorities: Teen killed by arrow appears to be accident.
Gee, in this day and age, a teen is an accident? Have the sex ed classes been teaching nothing, these days?