New Britain (Conn.) Herald — one year later

How the paper is doing a year after buying it from JRC.

http://newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=16094

This is my favorite passage because it sums up how stupid readers can get.

"It's no surprise everyone's on board with more local coverage, but people seem to say this reflexively. I can't get any specificity — more local what? One man complains "the first three pages used to be New Britain only." Well, the first four pages of every post-Schroeder issue I examined (and sometimes more) were devoted to New Britain. The most common request is for more local sports, even though each issue of the Herald devotes at least 10 pages to, in Schroeder's words, "covering local sports like they're the pros."

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You get more local news and a guy still has the nerve to say that the paper used to have more local news, when it was less.

 

I used to love it when a reader would call to complain that something wasn't in the paper. Then I would tell them what day's paper, and what page it was on, followed by the reader's sputtering.

Good times.

 

This, exactly.

"You never write about Podunk and their top player!"

"It's on Page 3 today, at the top right hand corner with a 3-line headline and a photograph of the player. It also has her statistics, the schedule of the next game coming up and we wrote about her last week."

"Oh."


Oh, indeed, you stupid sack of dumbass.

 

Sort of like the ad rep who said why I didn't write a story on a new business opening in town and the owner keeps complaining. I just said the owner must not read the paper and gave the date that the story appeared.

Do you ever wonder why there are so many fender benders? It's because people don't notice what's right in front of them.

 

from my experiences, most of the people who bitch don't even read the paper. they just want to bitch. had a guy complain about lack of coverage of the hs band when they'd been featured on the front page three times that week.

 

The high school band was on the front page three times in one week?

 

Re: New Britain (Conn.) Herald — one year later

MINGYA!

 

That was an interesting article. Nice to see Connecticut's media monopolies are still mostly alive and well, though, with the Courant owning alt weeklies.

 

The guy they mention as New Britain's editor was SE in Hartford briefly in the early 1980s. He gave me a courtesy interview in Hartford in 1983 -- he had no openings but spent some time with me anyway when I was visiting the area, and then had me put in a voucher to reimburse me for the mileage.

 

YAHTZEE would have also been a correct answer

 

This is why I don't trust reader surveys...
What do you want in your edition of your newspaper:
a. pro sports
b. college sports
c. local sports
I get the feeling "c" gets a lot of support because the reader figures the paper has to have pro and college. And because some do-gooders who would never read a cross country or swimming story figure they'll answer that way to help the kids.

 

It takes all the way to the end before you find out that the paper still isn't economically viable. Sheesh.