Home Town Newspapers Going Deliberately Provincial

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My local newspaper can't match the NYT's or The Wall Street Journal or The Christian Science Monitor or Google for broad and incisive coverage of national and international news, updated minute by minute on request.

They are no longer trying. The newspaper has always run "feel good" stories and "worthy cause" stories. They cover local politics in the villages, townships, towns and regions in their circulation area. Local sports (high school, collegiate and independent) gets far more coverage than national sport.

These days the front page headlines are almost always local news. National and International News usually occupies either page 3 or page 5, depending on how fat the paper is that day.

To some extent the editors follow the "If it Bleeds, It Leads" dictum of journalism. Murders get page one. So do untimely deaths. The recently opened casino owner is being investigated for mob connections and the investigation is being fully covered.

I've found that I have to remind myself that the murder rate in the county has not increased all that dramatically. The coverage has increased, but I'm as safe as I ever was.

I deplore sensationalism--but I read most of the gory stories with great interest.

Is your local newspaper proper and cosmopolitan? Or does it exploit a tabloid point of view?

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check my local paper here.

http://www.nenews.com.au/stories/mcHeadIndn.htm

all the publications listed are for regional and rural towns in this area with populations from 1,000 - 10,000.

Judge for yourself and have a little fun exploring rural australia via local newspapers.

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Dadpad--

Obviously a Booster Oriented Management--for an area worth boosting.

Still, where are the Police Notes?

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No crime here Noddy.

Well drunk and disorderly is not really headline news now is it?

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My local paper's lead story last week (it's a weekly paper) was about a trip the local Brownie Troop (tiny little girl scouts! Surprised

) made to the local supermarket. That was followed by interviews with 3 people who recently joined the local Rotary Club and a story on the local hardware store celebrating it's 100th year in business.

There is a "Police/Fire News" section but it generally mentions things like "A stray dog was reported in the vicinity of..." or "Police responded to the home of xxxx, an 86 year old woman, who had locked herself out of her house...". There are always several comments each day about how "Police investigated suspicious activity..." but very few cases where they ever seem to find anything.

For anything other than town news they link to their parent Corp. which runs a major Boston area paper.

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Sometimes "provincial" is "slapstick".

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080221/NEWS/80221010

He wanted dem damn dishes washed.

********

Also in the paper this morning:

Last week the caretaker for a retired Air Force Colonel was charged with arson. The Caretaker, 26 years old, was feeling depressed, so he lit a dishtowl and stuffed it in the living room closed.

Then he evacuated his patient.

Unfortunately the elderly colonel went back in the burning house and died yesterday of smoke inhalation.

The Arsonist is resentful--after all, he just set the fire. He wasn't responsible for the elderly man insisting on going back into the house. He's not a murderer--just a victim of circumstance.

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