Wednesday, July 30, 2008

What's the deal with the Courier-Journal and the Robert Felner story?

Surely C-J knows news when they smell it. They cover certain other stories with journalistic zeal. But on this story, C-J has been consistently a day late and a dollar short.

They seem to be reprinting Page One reporting without attribution.

An alternative explanation is that they are waiting to independently verify everything Page One reports, so that they can "ethically" print it without attribution.

In the e-mails, which The Courier-Journal obtained from UofL under the Kentucky Open Records Act, Felner expressed concern that ...

What's the explanation?
  • Does C-J have a sweetheart relationship with U of L that is getting in the way?
  • Are C-J's news gathering resources so completely depleted that they struggle to keep up with lowly bloggers?
Today's story is a nice recap of what you read yesterday. Read it. Don't read it. It won't enlighten anyone who has been following the story from other sources.

What today's story will do however, is get into the mainstream media. It will get picked up by the search engines and regular news outlets - none of whom will acknowledge the original source of the story.

Is this assessment too harsh?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Is this assessment too harsh?"

Nope!

Long after the fact the Bluegrass Institute got some recognition in the Elizabethtown papers for our research role in the Babs Erwin scandal, but KSN&C never did, to my knowledge, even though both of us were consistently leading on the story, just as PageOne Kentucky is on the Felner mess.

I guess that is why I now scan the blogs on both sides of the political spectrum for my insights more than the papers -- despite the fact that some good reporters still remain, the traditional press has lost it's advantage.

Richard Day said...

I've been concerned about the MSM, particularly newspapers, for some time now.

I only know enough to be dangerous...but it seems to me the relentless media corporations' push for double digit profit margins has caused newspapers to cut reporting staff. C-J and H-L offer buyouts; and reorganize... and hope to maintain some level of professioonal quality.

Have the cuts gone too far - to the point that the paper can't maintain as many as a handful of big stories at one time?

I don't really think C-J's covering Ramsey's backside...but I'm not sure which one is worse.