Thursday, July 9, 2009

Another buried Page 1 story

I've been trying to lay off the Flint Journal. Today, however, is an example of why the new organization of the Bay City-Saginaw-Flint alignment is faltering.

Earlier this week, at a time when the Flint Journal was not publishing, the reporters at the Journal initially broke the story of the involvement of the Shiawassee County prosecutor in a drunk driving crash.

Then the following day there was a post that simply linked to television news coverage of the event, which I found odd because the Journal had broken the story.

So today I was waiting to read more about the incident when my dead tree version arrived here at home. Let's be serious, the potential arrest of the elected county prosecutor in a drunk driving accident is big news. I naturally looked at the front page expecting to see the story there.

Nope.

So I turned to Page 2 and 3. Nope, again.

Now I'm getting curious. So I keep digging through the paper and finally find the story on page A-9. The old reporters' saying at the Flint Journal that you never know where you'll find a front page story was never truer than today.

I simply can't fathom the news judgment that doesn't see this as a major story, worthy of front page or at least Page 3 coverage.

It could be that the copy editor laying out the page was confused about the charge because the headline on the story said: "Alochol supsected in prosecutor's crash." Maybe the editor thought alochol was different than alcohol.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But it's a better paper with more breaking news, remember?

truthiness said...

Alochol is a very dangerous substance; it impairs one's news judgment. Alcohol, on the other hand, is what one needs to get through an issue of the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City journal without laughing (or crying).

Pam said...

Love the comment from truthiness!

Perhaps the copy editor had been testing a little alochol himself?

Anonymous said...

And today they a mention of "prostition" in a column. Not sure what that is but I've heard of prostitution. Do they even have any editors left?