in a rather amusing editorial piece this morning, gannett / the town talk's editorial page editor, cynthia jardon, complains about a mysterious, unnamed local blogger who is "a staunch democrat who works for [city of] alexandria [, louisiana] mayor jacques m. roy." link or click here to download two page .pdf [16 kb].
hmmm we wonder who that could be?
if it's who the central la politics blog says it is, then, it appears that this blogger did the same thing he regularly accuses wst... of doing -- which is posting half-cocked or posting without first checking with the object of the post for an explanation of their side of the story. or something like that.
what ms. jardon's piece is really indicative of though is how much gannett (as well as the rest of the msm) fear blogs and how they must be marginalized and discredited at every opportunity.
why would gannett care that some blogger mistakenly poked fun at their being shut out of a louisiana newspaper association competition? when, in the first place, its their own fault for this internet meme being unleashed by not having the foresight when they originally posted the results to explain why they werent mentioned.
surely, if the mysterious blogger that ms. jardon is complaining of thought that the the town talk was indeed "shut out" of the competition many other people and bloggers thought the same thing. for instance, see another local blog the light what happened to the town talk this year? no awards.
ms. jardon writes that while winning awards is good for generating favorable publicity and enhancing resume's that gannett / the town talk's game is "always about informing, protecting the public's interests and, when appropriate, entertaining."
this is simply untrue. a most recent example is the 05 may 2009 gannett / town talk piece captioned "police investigate threats, harassment to law firm." [click here to download one page .pdf 11 kb] we criticized klax's shoddy reporting of the incident here.
the town talk's treatment gives a little more information like how the alleged harasser referenced the the 04 october 2007 downtown alexandria law office shooting. of course its an understatement to say that this was an extremely serious incident. the course of history was changed that day. several people lost their lives and many more people's lives were forever changed.
yet despite their knowing this -- all the town talk generically reports is that its a law office on metro drive. its like the town talk was saying "we know something about something but all we're gonna tell you is that we know something about something."
what about informing and protecting the public's interests? doesnt this particular unknown law firm's clients as well as the people that work in offices around it and the public-at-large have a right to be informed that a potentially deadly situation could arise there so that they can take appropriate precautions? -- or perhaps, this piece falls under the town talk's duty to be entertaining?
far more interesting in todays piece, is ms. jardon's revelation that gannett / the town talk is too broke to pay the competition entry fee.
in an 05 may 2009 opinion piece the gannett / town talk editors gave {anal?] beads to two of their online reader/ commenters: "nola121567" and "kittenonkeys." link or click here to download one page .pdf 21 kb
to us this signaled that the town talk is about to shift their content to online and away from the print edition. why else would they promote their online commenters when they have pretty much ignored them for the past thirty-three months unless it was to pique the curiosity of and to plant a seed into the minds of their print readers to come online and check out whats going on there?
ms. jardon writes that: "my opinion is not for sale, and neither is the newspaper's." what a laugh. has anyone had a look lately at gannett's board of directors? its all corporation people.
monsanto has their man on the board. this helps to explain why you will likely never see an honest article in any gannett owned media about monsanto's frankenstein-esq adventures in genetic crop modification.
perhaps the local blogger was wrong in his hypothesis, however, its every blogs reader as well as those who follow the main stream media responsibility to use their god given critical thinking skills to determine for themselves if any particular blog post located on any blog -- including this one, as well as any media report, is correct, mostly correct or full of baloney.
