Why is the Times-Dispatch personally weighing in on Tony Soprano or writing localized stories about Paris Hilton – and publishing these stories on the front page of their website?
Seriously, right now they're acting like the 12-year-old boy who tries to score high school chicks by growing a mustache and practicing making out on a CPR dummy.
When it comes to being arbiters of national pulp culture, the RTD should stick to NASCAR fan fashion and the thread count of Elliott Yamin's bed sheets.
I understand trying to be hip and parlaying the momentum of national stories into some sort of local insight, but it just doesn't work unless you have a staff so shallow and pretentious that its writers lowercase all the letters of their names even in legal documents and claim to own a hypodermic needle that Amy Winehouse once actually used. (Seriously, haven't you seen an US Weekly reporter - they like to mug with celebs throughout their rag, so you probably have).
Such writers/fame whore chasers are awful, awful, awful people, but at least they can let me know the very second that James Gandolfini quits Atkins (again), or Paris Hilton gets stabbed with a toenail shiv while in the clink – and hopefully report it with an amazing allusion to Pam Grier's "Black Mama, White Mama."
My point? There's enough South Side traffic ordinances or West End Tupperware parties to fill the ink in the RTD. We know where to go for everything else.
4 comments:
Its very simple. The TD wants Richmonders to be more knowledgeable about Paris Hilton than the recent decision from the 4th Circuit.
And if you don't know what I am talking about, its time to start that subscription to the Washington Post.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were taking care of the basics. At the same time they run this pap (I couldn't believe that Paris HIlton story), they are dragging their feet on local news coverage and doing what they can to placate the status quo. And this new website of theirs might just take the prize for the worst newspaper site I've ever seen. You can't find links to stories from the recent past, for one thing. There are some talented people up there but what a joke!
Mike,
No, I don’t think the RT-D will figure out how to be hip. They had a guy with an excellent feel for the local pulp/trashy stories, who had a natural edge to his style -- Mark Holmberg -- and they ran him off.
To me, the strangest effort now underway at 333 is trying to pass The Brick off as “underground.” I don’t care who they get to edit that weekly -- it is what it is.
Good to see you in the blogosphere.
-- Terry
When I moved to RVA in '00, most of my culture shock revolved around having only one daily newspaper to read. That, and the utter lack of public transportation and what I call real theater (the best of what's available here is in the good-college-production category).
The Times Dispatch news hole is filled with what Media General believes its audience is interested in - that belief is fed by a cursory look at Fox News, and maybe the AP.
The editing gaffes and spelling errors, along with the editorial page, finally convinced me that I didn't need to give them my financial support and longer. I still read their headlines online, and I very much like their local business coverage...but for world and national news, I'm a London Telegraph, WashPost, NYTimes, NYDaily News girl.
The best local news in any town has pretty much moved to the web, although here that's still driven by what's available on newsprint. I think a tipping point is looming, though - this site is one of the stones on the up-side of that fulcrum.
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