My Hometown Newspaper Depresses Me

A few weeks ago my paper, the Titusville Herald (http://www.titusvilleherald.com) ran a story of a local bunch who got arrested for running a crystal meth lab in their homes. All well and good. But what disturbed me was how the paper went the extra mile and also went into detail about how video tapes were found there that showed a couple of the women involved really liked their dog. Decorum stops me from going any further, but it didn't stop the paper. Nope -- we got a lot of the nifty details. Any more and it could have been a letter from the dog starting out, "Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought it would happen to me..."

This is a paper that services at town of less than seven thousand (a lot less), and the paper has been really pushing its "Newspapers in the Classroom" program which gives classroom sets to any teacher who wants them. The first week this program went into effect in some elementary classes, they get this. ("Mommy...what's beastiality mean?") Not only that, but they have a teen page that is included once a week. One of the teen writers decided it would be great to write a story about an impressive deposit another student left in the boy's bathroom at the high school. Seven paragraphs' worth of story. Lovely reading over the breakfast table.

And the crowning achievement of journalistic style the paper achieves is "Open Line," a forum that allows people to bitch about anything and everything in town anonymously. Love that sense of responsibility. Honestly, I realize that newspapers are fighting reader attrition, but if this paper is going to continue to pander to the lowest common denominator, I'd rather it go under with dignity.