Can't See the Forest For the Trees They Cut Down To Print Their Paper

Commentary

I spent $2.50 last week to prove a point to myself, and to you.

The Middletown Press has begun to see, and portray Middletown through a particularly bloody lens.

When one of the former reporters was leaving the employ of our hometown daily, the reporter chuckled and confided that the publisher wanted to turn the Press into the New York Post (you know them, famous for the headline: Headless Body In a Topless Bar.)

I chuckled too, because little did I think there was fodder for that type of headline in Middletown.

How wrong I was. Just gaze upon the hysterical 120 point type in the set of headlines presented last week which would make the Middletown the center of a crime wave that features embezzlement, gambling, murder, robbery, fugitives, car chases, arson, stabbing, spitting, brawling and other such mayhem.

Those heds are no anomaly. Check an honor box any day and you'll have to agree.

The Press didn't have the money to hire a reporter to cover the recent municipal elections in Middletown. They've skipped out on city meetings and seem to ignore the fact that people actually walk on Main Street any Friday or Saturday night without worrying about flying lead.

To be fair, the paper did feature front page stories, below the fold, about successes at Macdonough School, and the recent swearing-in of municipal officials.

And I'm no Pollyanna. There's crime enough in Middletown, but it's not the essence of the town no matter how big the headlines get.

They've invested, though not heavily, in a reporter who covers the court and police beat, and are acting as if that's the only news in town.

I'm not sure the tabloid headlines (an irony since the paper just switched from a tabloid format, back to the traditional broadsheet), have staunched the flow of subscribers who have dropped the daily, but the sad truth is that the New York Post approach won't work in the long run. It hasn't for the New York Post.

Just last week, the New York Times reported that after six years of an increasing circulation under "genius" editor Col Allan, from 440,000 to 700,000 in six years, the last two and a half years has seen readership fall to just over half a million again.

And the biggest catalyst for the decline. In 2000, Rupert Murdoch reduced the the newstand price of the paper from 50 cents to 25 cents. Last year, the price went back up to 50 cents, and the readers fled.

There's only so much a sensible audience will pay for sensationalism, and I guess two bits is the barrier for blood and guts when so much of it is free on the web.