Potential subscriber's dilemma: CRG or P-C?
On August 1 I will be moving to better digs. Instead of a pot-holed parking lot strewn with garbage, I will have a garage. My new roommates will help keep the bathrooms clean, unlike Mervgotti. (He has never cleaned the bathroom since I moved in last August. I have always done it. Also, I do not think he has cleaned his room once in the four years he has lived here. Needless to say, I do not think I will ever be living with him again.) And I will finally have a porch, something I have wanted for a long time.
As I mentioned a while back, I am debating whether or not to have a newspaper thrown there every morning. I think I do, at least for a while just to try it out. But the hard part is trying to decide which paper it will be.
I have two choices: the Iowa City Press-Citizen and Cedar Rapids Gazette. Hmmm…
The CRG is produced by a locally and independently owned company and offers coverage of Eastern Iowa, mostly Cedar Rapids and “the corridor” area. Though a little late with IC and Johnson County news sometimes, it has a correspondent in Des Moines covering state politics and always offers at least one page of national and world news. It even has a business and “Accent” section.
The P-C is — [sad chuckle] — an eviscerated shell of its former self thanks to its parent company, Gannett. It is essentially a broadsheet piece of toilet paper with a handful of local stories, maybe a state story from the AP, and one or two pieces of national news that will interest local liberals. The P-C once had a large newsroom and printing facility on North Dodge, but is now run from the Brewery Square building on Market and Linn and has outsourced the printing and delivery of its papers to the CRG. It’s baseball scores and standings page is a USA Today facsimile (talk about cutting corners). Despite its sad (though planned) decline and dismal state, the P-C does have the local scene covered. That is the only thing it has going for it. Also, its almost useless Sunday edition comes packaged with the Des Moines Register (which manages to be a decent paper despite also being an eviscerated shell of its former self thanks to Gannett).
I want to stay informed regarding local politics. I want state, national, and world news. I want to support local companies. No matter what I do I cannot get everything I want, but I think the CRG offers the best compromise. However, part of me wants to subscribe to the P-C. Perhaps it is a romantic/nostalgic thing about subscribing to my hometown newspaper. Regardless, I feel that tug despite all I know and have heard about the shadiness of Gannett.
Listening to today’s fake bylines story on NPR reminded me of something I heard while camping in May. Sweats invited a couple friends to camp with us and one of them happened to be a photographer at the P-C. Having been inside the P-C’s old building on Dodge — a massive operation with admin offices, a central newsroom with stations, a production studio, and a printing and ad-stuffing facility — and the paper’s new home in Brewery Square — what appeared to be a maze of cramped offices — I wanted to get the inside scoop. I asked the photog if the P-C had any designers on-site. “Don’t get me started,” he said.
Instead of designing the paper in-house, he told me, the articles and photos are sent to Gannett’s “studio” in Knoxville, Tennessee, where page designers put everything together. (All of Gannett’s papers are probably designed there, too.) The designers then send the pages back to the Brewery Square offices, where editors and proofreaders make sure everything is correct and to their liking.
As disturbing (though not shocking) as that was, he told me something that made my blood curdle. Gannett is apparently experimenting with computer software that will take press releases and taped interviews and form them into stories. If a reporter does anything it will be to polish what the software has written. Whoa. That is sacrilegious — at least from the traditionalist’s perspective. Gannett, however, is a massive corporation with shareholders to satisfy. Computer software does not need a health insurance plan.
How can I support that? How can I suppose a company that reduces staff at its papers every year to cut costs, yet shower its executives with million dollar pay increases? Despite all my nostalgia and romanticism, I shouldn’t.
Guess I’ll need to get my local government news from Channel 4! (Or gather it myself.)
As I mentioned a while back, I am debating whether or not to have a newspaper thrown there every morning. I think I do, at least for a while just to try it out. But the hard part is trying to decide which paper it will be.
I have two choices: the Iowa City Press-Citizen and Cedar Rapids Gazette. Hmmm…
The CRG is produced by a locally and independently owned company and offers coverage of Eastern Iowa, mostly Cedar Rapids and “the corridor” area. Though a little late with IC and Johnson County news sometimes, it has a correspondent in Des Moines covering state politics and always offers at least one page of national and world news. It even has a business and “Accent” section.
The P-C is — [sad chuckle] — an eviscerated shell of its former self thanks to its parent company, Gannett. It is essentially a broadsheet piece of toilet paper with a handful of local stories, maybe a state story from the AP, and one or two pieces of national news that will interest local liberals. The P-C once had a large newsroom and printing facility on North Dodge, but is now run from the Brewery Square building on Market and Linn and has outsourced the printing and delivery of its papers to the CRG. It’s baseball scores and standings page is a USA Today facsimile (talk about cutting corners). Despite its sad (though planned) decline and dismal state, the P-C does have the local scene covered. That is the only thing it has going for it. Also, its almost useless Sunday edition comes packaged with the Des Moines Register (which manages to be a decent paper despite also being an eviscerated shell of its former self thanks to Gannett).
I want to stay informed regarding local politics. I want state, national, and world news. I want to support local companies. No matter what I do I cannot get everything I want, but I think the CRG offers the best compromise. However, part of me wants to subscribe to the P-C. Perhaps it is a romantic/nostalgic thing about subscribing to my hometown newspaper. Regardless, I feel that tug despite all I know and have heard about the shadiness of Gannett.
Listening to today’s fake bylines story on NPR reminded me of something I heard while camping in May. Sweats invited a couple friends to camp with us and one of them happened to be a photographer at the P-C. Having been inside the P-C’s old building on Dodge — a massive operation with admin offices, a central newsroom with stations, a production studio, and a printing and ad-stuffing facility — and the paper’s new home in Brewery Square — what appeared to be a maze of cramped offices — I wanted to get the inside scoop. I asked the photog if the P-C had any designers on-site. “Don’t get me started,” he said.
Instead of designing the paper in-house, he told me, the articles and photos are sent to Gannett’s “studio” in Knoxville, Tennessee, where page designers put everything together. (All of Gannett’s papers are probably designed there, too.) The designers then send the pages back to the Brewery Square offices, where editors and proofreaders make sure everything is correct and to their liking.
As disturbing (though not shocking) as that was, he told me something that made my blood curdle. Gannett is apparently experimenting with computer software that will take press releases and taped interviews and form them into stories. If a reporter does anything it will be to polish what the software has written. Whoa. That is sacrilegious — at least from the traditionalist’s perspective. Gannett, however, is a massive corporation with shareholders to satisfy. Computer software does not need a health insurance plan.
How can I support that? How can I suppose a company that reduces staff at its papers every year to cut costs, yet shower its executives with million dollar pay increases? Despite all my nostalgia and romanticism, I shouldn’t.
Guess I’ll need to get my local government news from Channel 4! (Or gather it myself.)
