Asheboro's Courier Tribune: A Newspaper Fundamentally Out-Of-Touch With The Community - And Reality

Yesterday was a busy day - much of it spent at NCBH getting an MRI of my noggin after a series of mis-steps on the ice.  All is as well as it can be.  I have a "a beautiful (healthy) brain".  I also took a number of phone calls from my brother - who is still in the hospital in Kentucky, but (thankfully) finally slowly getting better after a change in his antibiotic regimen (to what Big Sis thought he should have been on in the first place).

It's a good thing too.  Mary was getting read to summon the monkeys.

Came home late yesterday to get a good chuckle out of Edward-Cone-of-the-Cone's latest dig on the sad/sorry state of journalism in this country. 

When it comes to crappy local journalism, Edward Cone knows it all

Lifted from the Gawker article Cone linked:

. . . consider the new newspaper landscape:  America's two best papers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, sit behind paywalls.  Once-great papers like the Washington Post and the LA Times—already eroded by economics and niche online competitors—find that they simply aren't good enough to make a paywall work;  it would drive away too many readers to readily available free competitors. (See Newsday, for example.)  Second-tier papers will continue to cut costs and get worse.  First-tier papers will become must-reads for the economically advantaged people who can afford to pay for them.  The cost of breaking into that first tier will be very, very high—prohibitive, in fact, for most current newspaper companies that aren't already there.

While Ed Cone-of-the-untouchable-Cones was writing columns for the hometown newspaper (the Greensboro News & Record) that is now the subject of his poorly-disguised hostility (hummmmmmm . . . I wonder it you could call that "cyber-bullying"?), down here in Asheboro yours truly was actually LIVING the consequences of the hometown newspaper having been in bed with "the right people" for almost two decades.

Suckered into the "citizen journalism" scene back in 2005 (one of the N&R's most boldly spectacular failures - because John Robinson & company could never could step out of their own comfort zone), Yours Truly actually talked about it a great deal on her blog . . . as perhaps the biggest problem contributing to her inability to get our systems of medical and legal oversight to work the way the law says they're supposed to work.  But Edward Cone and his very progressive friends in the Greensboro blogosphere could not be bothered with "old news" and "ancient history".  "Wack-job" Mary needed to "get over it" and "move on."

In short, in the one area-of-life where Edward Cone-of-THE-MOSES-CONE-HEALTHCARE SYSTEM-CONES did have practical expertise and some influence (as opposed to all of the other areas of life he liberally pontificates about) . . . and in one case/life where he might have made a real difference, Cone and his enlightened others totally dropped the ball.

Of course, now that sold-out-to-the-corporate-kleptocrats journalism is biting Edward and Lex and all of the progressive rest in the ass, it's something to blog about.

(They're all a bunch of wack-jobs, dontcha know.)

This week in Asheboro, the Courier Tribune reported on the demise of local construction company, J.H. Allen.  The mighty continue to fall here. 

Now the Courier, as part of a grand experiment being conducted by its "parent company" (using already teetering-on-the-brink, expendable newspapers in its stable), dived behind a paywall late last year.  For the reasons cited in the Gawker article above, it was an incredibly STUPID business decision . . . because in order for something like that to work, you first have to have a product that the reading public respects and trusts . . .

. . . a product with integrity and credibility.

For reasons well-known to readers, I will NEVER, EVER pay another dime for the Courier's offerings, but I have several friends with subscriptions who delight in sending me the text of articles they think I might find interesting.

I don't dare quote anything from these articles lest I be targeted as a defendant in one of the parent company's "copyright infringement" lawsuits (and we all know how I might react to being SLAPP'ed again).  So I'll summarize.  The article on J.H.Allen's demise listed its many accomplishments over the years - including building an expansion to Randolph Hospital (my Dad told me a good story about that a number of years ago - an anecdote that makes Robert Morrison's $700,000/year salary - something you most definitely will not be reading about in the Courier - all the more CRIMINALLY ABSURD).  The piece then went on to talk about the general state of the construction business nationwide . . . dropping crumbs of hope that probably do not exist on the local plane - because if J.H. Allen cannot make it work in Asheboro, it's likely no one can.

But the piece-de-resistance in the Courier's offerings this week has been yet another ditty featuring Mike Miller, former CEO of Community One (formerly First National Bank of Asheboro). 

Regular readers know all about Mike's LEGENDARY "stewardship" of the bank . . . in that greedy/STUPID Mikey managed to lose around 250 MILLION dollars in bad deals over three years . . . with the bank's stock dropping from around 30 dollars/share to (at one time) below 30 cents a share . . . and now men-in-dark-suits-running-in-packs-at-all-hours-of-the-day-and-night are directing the show . . . with SunTrust Bank set to pick up what's left of Humpty Dumpty.  Miller "retired" last year . . . moving on to Dancing with the Randolph County Stars . . . and then skipping on over to assume the helm of Pfeiffer University . . . in an clearly-under-the-table-"inside-job"-stinky-deal engineered with help from N.C. Commerce Secretary "Evil" Keith Crisco.

Right people take care of their own.

The Courier wants to re-hab Mikey (not-to-mention Randolph Tech), so now Asheboro is getting regular Pfeiffer College University updates.  This one was about Mike appointing a new VP of "Advancement" . . . which translates to VP of Fund-raising (something that might have taken a hit with the appointment of a grossly unqualified-compared-to-the-competition Miller as President).

Indeed, if I were a parent at Pfeiffer, I would have pulled my kid out.  Mike Miller's soft landing, after destroying the finances of so many, is not a life lesson I would want to support with my tuition dollars - or even passively endorse. 

But we're back to the people publishing the Courier Tribune being fundamentally clueless about what it's going to take to save their paper and their jobs . . . people who are "arrogant and cliquish" in ways that Laurie Anderson and I could not have begun to aspire to back when oily Steve Eblin was calling us names for doing our jobs like we were . . . oh, I don't know . . . Pediatricians.  Asheboro's reality is that our local "newspaper" has lost all touch with the ordinary subscription-buying community - the very (increasingly disinterested/skeptical) audience for their pricey ads.  In bed with its corporate ad-masters for years, the Courier Tribune cannot be trusted to report anything objectively or fairly.  And forget investigative journalism.  After all, who is gonna do it?  JD Walker (she who puts down her pen)?  Chip Womick (the man who'll take the city's money and run)?  Annette Jordan (do as we say, not as we wink and nod at)?  Puhlease. 

Speaking truth to power just doesn't happen in Asheboro.  People get hurt when they try.

I've watched, with dismay, a small group of "right people" endlessly hob and nob and literally MURDER my hometown.  If were the kind of thing that could be prosecuted (yeah, I know, I made a FUNNY), the Courier Tribune could be charged as an accomplice.

And in a bad economy, where-so-many-of-us-know-the-score-of-the-game-that's-always-been-rigged, people are even less likely to want to pay for the spin when they can get their news for free elsewhere.

But alas, when the Courier falls, it will be like hearing a tree fall in the forest.  We don't have another local daily to report the demise . . .

. . . and unfortunately, lately, the Randolph Guide seems to be marching along in the same steps.