Chili Champs vs. Deadly Tornados: A Letter To The Editor Of The Courier Tribune

I've been spring cleaning this week - actually making up for a couple of missed springs - and blogging has been on the back-burner.  It actually hurts to type this as my fingers are raw from scrubbing floors and washing walls.

A few days ago, a friend of mine forwarded me a Letter-To-The-Editor of the Courier Tribune - it was on behalf of a friend of his who had (good) reason (as you will shortly see) to believe it would not be printed.  The letter mirrored the sentiments I expressed last Sunday about what passed for local news reporting in the wake of a swarm of unusually-powerful-for-these-parts tornadoes that turned large portions of the Eastern part of our state into a hellish version of Oz.

At least this time (as opposed to when Hurricane Floyd drowned the coastal inlands), we won't have Peggy Morrison (wife of my nemesis, Bob) berating the locals for diverting their charitable giving away from local United Way coffers.

I told my friend to give the Courier a chance and if the letter was not up by Easter Sunday, I'd print it here.

Little birds tell me that it was in the paper yesterday.  Given the Courier's recent shenanigans propping up its latest "business model" (which is actually just a more facist version of David Renfro's longtime modus operandi of being little more than a local fan magazine for its advertisers) many people in my "quarter" are dumbfounded by the Courier's journalistically bipolar behavior.  And the letter is apparently the talk of the town. 

Alas, unless you buy a subscription, you cannot read the letter online, so I've decided to remedy that situation by publishing it here:

Dear Mr Criscoe,

I just received the Monday, April 18th 2011 edition of the COURIER TRIBUNE and I must express my feelings and disappointment at this newspaper. After the worst natural weather disaster to hit our state since 1984 (when a similar series of terrible tornadoes devastated eastern North Carolina) your newspaper carried only one small one-column x 7 inch long article about only one of the storms to hit NC. Your headline on this date's edition read "Chili champ crowned"! That is almost unbelievable!

How can the COURIER TRIBUNE call itself a newspaper when it ignored what may well become the biggest news story about North Carolina this year? This allows me to give my editorial about the decision of the COURIER TRIBUNE'S management to discontinue the Monday edition: If you can't do better than what you DIDN'T do in today's paper, then you should close-up shop and return to Las Vegas.

Of course this incident is only the tip of the iceberg. Continually, the COURIER TRIBUNE devotes much of its space to run non-news stories and photos about the "rich and famous" of Asheboro patting each other on their backs for, well, patting each other on their backs when real local news stories about hard-working local citizens and volunteers actually doing the community work, in the trenches, getting their hands dirty, often go under or un-reported. All of which leads one to ask what other important local news stories may go un-reported by the COURIER TRIBUNE?

I know an argument will be made that the COURIER TRIBUNE's web site contains more information than what's printed in the paper. Well, not everyone who lives in Asheboro or Randolph County has Internet access and even those of us who do would rather sit down at the breakfast table, drink our cup of coffee or tea, munch on an egg, bacon and cheese biscuit and digest the newspaper with our breakfast from front to rear in a quiet, relaxed atmosphere. Not everyone enjoys sitting in front of a computer screen "surfing the web".

Your decision not to run a Monday edition speaks not as much about the state of the economy or the expansion of the Internet as it indicates the COURIER TRIBUNE is, in my opinion, a poorly run newspaper and today's issue is the best example I could ever site to support this argument.

Shame on the COURIER TRIBUNE and it's editorial staff!

Ken Powell

There's a whole lotta truth in this letter, and for once, I'm glad that someone else is standing up to say it.  As the protagonist in one of those bothersome-for-the-right-people stories that the Courier Tribune has flat out IGNORED, I'm thinking that, just like Community One, it's on its way out unless it changes its ways.

And no one will shed a tear over their breakfast when it happens.