By Calvin Palmer
Timing is everything. In the fiercely competitive world of the media, it is critical. I have seen night editors fired for not carrying a late-breaking news story. A newspaper can look decidedly amateurish if it misses out on a story that all the other papers are carrying the next day.
Jacksonville’s newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, falls into a class of its own. It appears, as we British say, half-soaked in terms of its news values and that has nothing to do with the copious amounts of rain Tropical Storm Fay dumped on the city last week.
Somehow, the editorial staff at The Florida Times-Union seems to march to the beat of a different drum than the rest of the newspaper world. And in the light of today’s edition, they also seem to march at a slower pace.
The Viewpoint page, or op-ed page as it is known in the trade, carries a piece by Mark Powell, a freelance journalist who specializes in identifying error in major media and public facilities. Powell wrote about the Chinese flag being carried upside down in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Yes, you did read that right, the opening ceremony.
I eagerly await Powell’s future piece about The Florida Times-Union carrying his article the day after the closing ceremony and two weeks too late, although I doubt I will see it published in The Florida Times-Union.
Given that yesterday was the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, an event with a global audience, I was also surprised the story, and a photograph, failed to make the front page of The Florida Times-Union. It’s that different drum again. The main story, or splash as it is termed in the newsroom, was about students starting back at universities and colleges. It also featured a picture of parents and students carrying stuff into a university dorm. I bet Reuters flashed that one around the world pretty sharpish.
As to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, it was relegated to the front page of the Sports Section and shunted to the bottom of the page, with a photograph whose size was more in keeping with a story about students carrying belongings into a dorm.
If the publishers of The Florida Times-Union are concerned by the newspaper’s declining profits, instead of blaming falling advertising revenue in the face of the economic downturn, they might care to look at the product they are producing. Putting real news stories on the front page would be a step in the right direction.
Employing more journalists, of the caliber of Ron Littlepage who is not afraid to tell it how it is, rather than lifting stories from other newspapers in the United States would be another good move. The two Beijing stories on the front of the Sports Section come from The Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. That really helps to give the paper a local feel to it.
Jacksonville is a city and deserving of a daily newspaper of merit. It may not be able to aspire to the great newspapers of New York, Chicago or Los Angeles but what it is getting at the moment is effectively the content of a weekly newspaper produced on a daily basis. Such an approach not only does a great disservice to the city but also the newspaper itself. I am sure that I am not alone in referring to The Florida Times-Union as The Jacksonville Joke.
Times-Union
4 Comments
August 28, 2008 at 7:38 am
During the C18th fierce and vocal opponents of the sitting British Government were often invited to join the administration to shut them up. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that. Maybe if you continually complain and hold up these jokers at the Times-Union for scathing ridicule they deserve for long enough they will offer you a chance to improve their standards by employing you, or at least shut you up in the process.
August 28, 2008 at 9:38 am
That is fine in theory. But you, Old Stokie and Winger are the only people who read those pieces about The Jacksonville Joke.
August 28, 2008 at 12:07 pm
And the US Government hunting out subversives. You’ll be considered some sort of free thinking anarchist over there
Well every gaffe, every poor piece of journalism, every oudated report, and every blatant piece of political indoctrination you encounter, you should be emailing the editor to explain your objections. When they are getting a daily email they might take notice, especially if you include a link to your blog so they can see an example of your high standards of writing. Of course you just might get a visit from that Republican Mayor and his boys instead…
August 28, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Mayor? I meant Police Chief. Doh!