12.20.2006
Regurgitating The News
Last year a porn movie was filmed in Plattsburgh; college students were recruited as local talent. Controversy has arisen with the recent release of the movie: Plattsburgh University looks bad and there also is the issue of safe sex.
Did Plattsburgh’s daily (news)paper break this story? No, it was first reported in the student newspaper at Plattsburgh U, Cardinal Points, as front page news.
Even though the daily paper claims it is in “the breaking news business,” The PeePee didn’t cover the porn movie controversy until after the college paper lead the way. The article by The PeePee was more or less a re-write of the Cardinal Points story.
(Note: The college newspaper is printed under an arrangement with The PeePee, using its presses.)
More recently it came to light that a NENYland town justice was engaging in dubious activities, counseling young defendants outside his court, running his own “probation program” as such. The town where the justice operates, Keeseville, is in the The PeePee’s news coverage area. Did it break that story?
No. The story was featured on the front page of The New York Times (Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006). All The PeePee did was repeat the essentials of the NYT article.
What is going on? As I mentioned before on this blog, the Albany Times Union ran a piece about a former Plattsburgh mayor who was just hired for a top state job. While he was still mayor, the new appointee had starred in a TeeVee ad for a furniture store in downtown Plattsburgh that was going out of business. There was a good reason why the Times Union brought up that fact: the former mayor was now employed in a high level position with the Department of Corrections, but apparently he didn’t know that the two men who ran the furniture store had criminal records. They had been arrested some time ago by the FBI for selling cable TeeVee descramblers.
Plattsburgh is an overgrown small town. It ain’t that big. Neither the former mayor nor the Plattsburgh daily paper knew about that FBI bust? Anyway, for some reason, The PeePee didn’t mention the Times Union piece.
But at least it did fill everyone in that it is under new ownership. In a special editorial the publisher stated nothing would change; The PeePee will still maintain high standards of journalism.
Really.
Maybe it’s time for The PeePee to get its reporters out of the office and into the field, working some sources. You know, report the news, instead of regurgitating it.
Until then, I’ll have to read the Plattsburgh University Cardinal Points, the Albany Times Union, and the New York Times to find out what is going on in my backyard.
# posted by Stan Spire @ 10:13 PM 
