The Real Top Ten
The mainstream press too often assumes that because people don’t want to read downer news, they won’t. If you ask people if they like reading bad news and they will say they don’t. (Would you date a guy that said “I love reading bad news”?) But when the Washington Postbroke the story about appalling conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center last year and the terrible treatment of returning Iraqi vets, readers ate up those stories. It was the reaction from the general public that led to an overhaul of the U.S. Army top command. Though people don’t want to read downer stories, they will if those stories are important and if the stories help point the way towards achievable reforms.
The North Coast Journal recently launched a redesign and seems to have adopted a new direction, striving to be the intellectual center of Humboldt County. As a free weekly the Journal has a more difficult problem identifying its readers than even daily newspapers. Because the Journal’s readers pick up the paper at news racks, they can’t be tracked except by location. I hope that with the new direction they don’t forget that as many people read the paper in the Summer Street Laundromat as in Brio. And I hope that as part of a long history of alternative weeklies, it persistently prints stories that force the people at Brio to see the people at the ‘mat.
With two daily newspapers, one regional weekly and an assortment of community weeklies we should have one of the most informed readerships around. But I fear that if papers focus on what people think they want to read about rather than what they should know about, we will have this: A blissfully ignorant readership in a very mediated region.
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on the cover
Railroad!
Proposed lines ‘set rich blood a-tingling’ in early 1900s
Some Other Proposed North Coast Railroads
Choo-choo Fantasies
Exposing this east-west rail nonsense
seven-o-heaven
Undeterred Will
Will chides Andrew for lack of attention to detail and makes plans for his inevitable victory.
Recent media maven
May 17
If You Tweet in a Forest
April 5
Not in My Court Yard
March 1
Take the Money and Run With It
Today
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
Flow 2012 Fashion Show
STAFF PICK / events / 8 p.m. Arcata Theatre Lounge, 1036 G St. Student designed and produced clothing. Fundraiser for Arcata Arts Institute. $35/$25 students. artsinstitute.net. 822-1220.
Woodside Preschool's Rummage/Bake Sale
events / 8 a.m.-noon. Woodside Preschool, 900 Hodgson St, Eureka. www.woodsidepreschool.com. 445-9132.
Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
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