Give the Flint Journal credit for recycling. Not newsprint, but certainly recycling news.
Five years ago the Journal did a blowout special edition on the 50th anniversary of the devastating Beecher tornado that killed dozens of people.
So Sunday, the 55th anniversary of the tornado, the Journal, who can't seem to get enough of this disaster, recycled much of that five-year-old material into an online package.
Reporter Shena Abercrombie, a good reporter who took over my old beat plus keeping the several beats she already had, did the update story for the dead tree edition, but online the Journal reached into its morgue and recycled a number of stories that were done five years ago.
The also dusted off another story from 2001 done by the late Len Hoyes on the tornado.
When I went online today at first I was surprised to see bylines from old friends Kim Crawford and Ed Ronders, but then spotted the editor's note that acknowledged these were actually reprints from 2003. Hopefully, they'll recycle a new check for my two buddies.
Are we glimpsing the future of newspaper thrift? No need for reporters when you got stories on ancient history by people who are long gone. They were good the first time, so what not again?
So what will be get next year on the 56th anniversary of the tornado, more of the same?
The Journal is in love with anniversary stories. The slaying of Kayla Rolland at Buell Elementary School and the Beecher Tornado are just two examples.
It's cheaper than actually looking for news, especially when the stories are in-the-can and already paid for. No need for reporters, just a good librarian. Oh wait, they got rid of the librarian, so it must just take a good computer program that can retrieve old stories.
Newspaper imagination should be more than looking back at old calendars and copying what you did before.
5 comments:
I expected to see the biggest story of the day, that of Sen. Hillary Clinton endorsing Sen. Obama, but was surprised to see this annual recount of a 55 year-old tornado story.
The story of the first African-American to get a major party nomination free-and-clear in the history of the nation was bumped to page 2.
Speaking of recycled news, if you go to one of the many articles posted at the Davison news portion of Mlive, such as this one here, and look under the box on the left hand column labeled "Top Michigan News", you see a story about how Mitt Romney just won the Nevada GOP primary!
Kevin,
The editor tried to address that issue in his column on the editorial page Sunday.
They did try to recover with more coverage of the event on Friday, but I will make one observation.
The Journal will frequently send reporters out to do man-on-the-street reaction stories to events that have little or nothing to do with Flint. I have recounted that issue before on the blog and I don't want to belabor it here.
It would seem that the nomination of an African-American as a major party candidate for President of the United States would certainly rate the same treatment.
With a large African-American population in Flint, there must be, should be, considerable interest, excitement, you name it, as it relates to Barack Obama.
The Journal has been frequently accused of being tone deaf to its African-American readers. I understand that sometimes that perception is more a factor of incompetence rather than a lack of sensitivity.
But it is decisions like playing down the nomination of Barack Obama that feed that perception and keep it alive.
This certainly had more value as a man-on-the-street than many of the issues I was sent out to explore.
It may be a factor that of the two top editors, one lives in Lansing and commutes, the other is a newcomer to Flint and may not completely understand the senstivities.
But that's just my opinion.
When you can't or won't break fresh news, it's always nice to know you can take your readers on a trip in the wayback machine.
In the meantime, the editors of a newspaper located in a predominately African-American city missed the history-making significance of Barack Obama's clinching of the Democratic nomination. To your point, Jim, many man-on-the-street stories are crap, but in this case, talking to Flint residents about this historic event would have been interesting and worthy of front-page coverage.
OK, this is your blog author helping Lamont Cranston post a comment.
Lamont, as you old guys will know, is from the radio days and he's not down with this new high tech stuff.
So, because he can't figure out how to make the comment thing work on his old dial-up computer, I have offered to take his comments by e-mail and posting them here.
But trust me, Lamont is a real person, just a real old person. I won't do this for everyone, but I'm always helpful to my elders. That's just the way I roll.....
Here's Lamont's comment:
"What a riot to see my old pals' bylines (stories by guys who have since retired, took the buyout and/or died) that marked the 50th anniversary of the Beecher tornado five years ago, back on the Journal's Mlive page..
Well, you can't kill the classics, but you can give them a good beating. The sad thing is some of those stories, especially those with any length or depth, couldn't and wouldn't be printed in today's Flint Journal. Hell, the reporter there wouldn't be allowed the time to do those, anyway, with today's sweatshop conditions. Tote that barge! LIft that bail!
Lamont Cranston"
Thanks Lamont, now go out and subscribe to a DSL connection.
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