It's exactly as I said in the paper: needed more time with my family and wanted to try something new. When Mike Donila agreed to come aboard, I figured it was a good time, just because I knew they'd have a great guy with tremendous talent.
What I'm doing next?
Don't know exactly. I'll report back when I do. In the meantime, I plan to get my soapbox fix here, just like it was before I got in with the paper, regardless of whether or not anyone is reading. It'll give me something to do until I get busy again.
Sitting at Jittery Joes, I picked up the Telegraph and a familiar feeling swept over me: anger and hopelessness. (That's a wee bit of an exaggeration.) The lead story is a good one about the service delivery strategy, which I firmly believe is an issue with greater importance than most folks would suspect, though the headline itself is stupid. Next to it, a national story--like just about any you can find on Yahoo or Google--about Obama's reversal on stem cell research.
Below the fold, which is a weird no man's land since it is the front page but on the half most folks ignore when they're weighing whether or not to buy it, a story about how the Macon Police Department and Bibb County Sheriff's worked together with several other agencies to crack a meth trafficking ring. THAT IS FUCKING HUGE!
But because it's the (nee' Macon) Telegraph, it goes below the fold. That way, people can keep bitching about how the police don't do anything, going on about how bad crime is here and all that. It goes below the fold, beneath a national story that--while important--has less impact on our daily, local lives.
If the next biggest local story was about the birth of 39 puppies, instead of 39 arrests made in conjunction with the drug ring bust, I could see it below the fold.
Bah.
I said it was familiar, and I mean more like de ja vous. Before I started writing for the 11th Hour, I was upset by an issue of The Telegraph that put a headline about Wesleyan's endowment above a story about the way in which poor folks were gonna get screwed by state tort reform.
But, Chris, one is very local, and the other is a statewide issue. Yeah, but in this case, the tort reform law sort of flew in without much notice--or at least much ruckus from poor folks who would no longer be able to sue doctors beyond a preset limit, etc--and it seems like that would be the story you want to roll with. Wesleyan, which is a fine institution and all that, only has a few hundred students. There are THOUSANDS of broke people in Macon.
Do you see where I'm going?
Well, you will. Because I'm gonna bitch and moan for a while. (Just not all of it today.)
5 comments:
Quite frankly, I agree with you! Maybe if you and others 'bitch' enough, The Telegraph might get the message....
Keep up the good work!
M.S.
Word...I have an older book that talks about the hyper local content idea before it was popular and it lists the Telegraph amongst paper worst at local content.
But then the Telegraph is seeing hard times with McClatchy papers having big issues. McClatchy just cut 1900 jobs today I believe.
It's the Macon Telegraph. Seriously. Sad.
Heh, I think I wrote that Wesleyan story.
Welcome back ;-)
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