Culture Vulture

Let's start with the good news - apparently Sonia Sotomayor is a New York Yankees fan.
Bronx-born and bred, how could she not be?
Her continued loyalty to the home team speaks volumes about her sense of judgment and clarity of thinking, and goes a long way towards relieving doubts that might creep in when you take a slightly closer look at her judicial record.
Sotomayor, who is currently a federal appeals court judge, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Her nomination has already received widespread coverage in the media, which will only grow in depth and intensity as the Congressional hearings on her qualifications approach and get
underway. But since Vermont has a seat at the table in the form of Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which will recommendation (or not) Sotomayer for her spot on the nation's highest Court of Law, we'll throw in our two cents for the fun of it.
All Supreme Court appointments are political to some degree or another. That's simply a fact of life and it's been that way for a long time. With luck, we also get a qualified jurist as well, and the track record, overall, hasn't been bad. If you reach that level of
being on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination, you can't be that incompetent.
Unfortunately, competency and qualifications for the post aren't the only factors that come into play. For at least the past 20 years, and maybe longer - certainly since the shameful decision not to approve the nomination of the highly qualified Robert Bork to be a Supreme Court Justice on highly partisan political grounds - politics and
ideology have come into play as never before. One of the leaders of the charge against Bork was none other than the current Vice President, Joseph Biden. From the left and the right, both sides have been obsessed with how nominees would vote on the abortion issue and whether or not they would uphold Roe v. Wade. It's hard to imagine
that once upon a time, nominations for the Supreme Court were so low key that the nominees rarely even showed up in person to testify, nor were expected to.
Sonia Sotomayor seems on the surface to be a well-qualified jurist and certainly has the requisite experience one would expect for a candidate for the nation's highest court. We think that should really be the central issue. It's all well and good that she will be the
first Hispanic justice, and the third woman, but those facts are distinctly secondary to whether or not her judicial track record to date is solid.
We're a little troubled by the notion of "empathy" that has surrounded Sotomayor's appointment, played up by the President himself. It's fine that judges should have "empathy." It's even better that Sotomayor has stated she is concerned about the
practical, real-world consequences of her decisions. But in the end, it's about interpreting the Constitution and arriving at legal decisions based on precedents.
We're highly troubled by one decision Sotomayor had a role in that involved a discrimination suit by 18 firemen from New Haven, Conn against that municipality. It grew out of a decision by that city to void the results of a job promotion exam because no African-Americans had scored high enough to qualify for a promotion. The 18 firemen
argued they had passed the test fair and square and their qualifications were being thwarted because the right outcome, by the city's estimation, hadn't occurred. The case went up the appeals ladder, and Sotomayor was a member of a three-judge panel that upheld a lower court ruling that found in favor of New Haven, and against
the firemen. In one of those delicious ironies of history, the case in now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments last month.
We're sorry, but we live in a meritocracy, or we should be, and if the 18 firemen were the best qualified for the job promotions, then that should have been the end of the story, unless someone could prove the test was blatantly slanted to disadvantage minority groups, which to the best of our knowledge, has not been alleged.
Sotomayor may have had an "inspiring" life story, an up from the ghetto journey that saw her rise through sheer native intelligence and hard work to the top of her classes at Princeton University and Yale Law School. She may well deserve a seat on the Supreme Court.
But we hope that before she is finished testifying before Leahy's Judiciary committee, the honorable Senators quiz her a bit about her thinking in the case involving the 18 New Haven firefighters, and make sure that she is clear that it's about more than just "empathy."

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

President Barack Obama has come in for some criticism during the past month or so, as the nation attempts to recover from a steep economic downturn, for trying to keep his eye on the long term big picture. We think he and his administration are right to stay locked onto that focus, and hope the admittedly enormous array of problems the nation is facing, both foreign and domestic, doesn’t overwhelm their ability to separate the forest for the trees.
The worst economic slump in at least a quarter century — and while it’s the Great Depression that our current malaise is often compared to, so far the recession of the early 1980s is still statistically the sharper one in terms of unemployment and inflation — would tax most administrations when the world was a calm place. But with Pakistan leading the way, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea and the issues they are presenting in different ways, the world is hardly calm. Did we forget about Iraq? Next year at this time, assuming continued outward tranquility, the role of U.S. military forces are scheduled to shift to more of a background mode. That period will be a real test of how well the “surge” and political reconciliation among the Iraqis has really gone. It remains an open question.
Then we have the cranky Russian bear longing to be on the prowl again, eager to reassert its former Cold War power and influence. Meanwhile China is seeking a role in global affairs to match its growing financial clout The Chinese at least want to become pre-eminent players in their own backyard. A crisis in the Straits of Formosa, should one erupt, would pose a massive problem for the U.S., dependent as we are on the Chinese soaking up all that American public debt that is our short term way out of our economic difficulties.
So while all this is going on, President Obama is trying to say that reforming the health care system, insisting on meaningful improvements in the nation’s public education system and pushing forward on a "green” agenda on energy use must be part of the program. He’s right. The economy might rebound for awhile as a result of the massive injection of public money into the financial structure and some key industrial corporations like General Motors that are deemed too big to fail, but if we don’t stop wasting it on an amazingly inefficient healthcare and health insurance system, if too many of our elementary and secondary students are subpar compared with students elsewhere and if we don’t — 35 years later than we could have — finally get serious about energy use and our dependence on foreign oil, the one or two trillion dollars we’re borrowing from future generations will be a one-off fix. We just can’t afford to be stupid about this stuff anymore.
The President, who’s unfortunately got to work through a fantastically complicated set of difficulties with the help of some partisan political hacks like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D—Nevada, deserves some support for trying not to get bogged down in the crises du jour and to look for a fundamental overhaul of what’s dragging the creative entreneurial energy of the nation backwards. Congressional Republicans, increasingly a pathetic one note band on taxes and the stimulus, need to get a life — or maybe a time out — and start offering intelligent alternatives if big picture solutions aren’t part of their way out of the box. They have an important role to play, but right now, they seem stuck in the Potomac mud, irrelevant. They remind us of the Democrats during the Reagan era, when it was the GOP who had the leading guy who resonated with the American public.
Reagan too, had a few big ideas — cut taxes, an appropriate stategy at that time, rebuild the U.S. military, and topple the Russians. He suceeded on all three counts, and that’s why he is remembered as a successful president. In the end, it’s the big picture that counts.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Restoring passenger rail service to Manchester and the surrounding region is one of those hardy perennials, that much like the spring flowers we hope to soon see blooming, pops up out of the ground every so often to beguile us with thoughts of accomplishing two things at once — giving our local economy a boost and doing the right thing environmentally.
Last week a group of area officials and businesspeople went to Montpelier to urge the State Senate Transportation Committee to look favorably upon extending passenger rail service south from Rutland, through Manchester and Bennington before veering west toward Albany. To do that, the quality of the railroad tracks between Rutland and Manchester need an upgrade and other improvements made.
Like magic, a portion of the money coming to Vermont from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan may be available to grease the wheels. The $25 million or so officials estimate would be required to bring the tracks up to snuff, along with other needed investments, might fold neatly into a larger sum of money intended to help expand passenger rail service elsewhere in the state.
Bennington County officials and businesspeople were motivated to jump into the haggling over how the rail money might get divvied up because of the possibility that the county could be shut out of passenger rail upgrades altogether. State officials could opt to expand passenger rail service south only from Burlington to Rutland, which could then link up with the already established Ethan Allen Amtrak Express — recently spared from the state budget ax — and move passengers over to Albany that way. Or they could start from the south and build north.
But before we all get excited about the prospect of bringing passenger trains back to Manchester, we’d like to see a fair, objective study or analysis of how many passengers are really likely to ride the train. These sorts of decisions really need to be based on as much hard factual data as possible. Let’s not make investments based on wish-fulfillment or overly rosy scenarios. Because the fact of the matter is, the economics of passenger rail service, both coming and going, are highly problematic and far from an obvious necessity.
It would be one thing if the feds were simply happy to shower some overdue pork barrel spending here, but that’s not the whole story. Right now, the ridership on the Ethan Allen Express requires a federal and state subsidy of about $65 per passenger, on top of the price of the train ticket. The cost to the state treasury amounts to nearly $5 million per year.
We’re not sold yet that regular passenger train service is a panacea for local business, tourist-oriented or other. If it turns out it would be, great. But right now it takes longer, and costs more, for the typical visitor from downstate New York to arrive here by train, who is then faced with getting around a rural area with either a rented car, a van service or maybe, a bicycle. Until train service gets much faster, or the price drops significantly, or the price of gas shoots back into the $4-5 range (or higher), train service simply isn’t competitive. It may be fun, it may even be romantic, But until it’s an equitable dollars and cents match, it’s hard to see passenger rail being even close to a break-even alternative.
Here’s an idea we think does make some sense and may be worth exploring — light commuter rail. For much less money, upfront or otherwise, you could have a small two or three, highly automated passenger train car link from Manchester to Albany. Potentially, if the ridership were there, run several times a day. It wouldn’t require the level of track upgrades a full-blown heavy passenger rail service would, and would be sufficient to transport local residents who might want to travel to New York for the day or weekend and bring visitors to our neighborhood. People could live here and commute to work in Albany.
Train service is wonderful in the right places. Along the heavily populated Boston to Washington D.C. corridor, it makes an awful lot of sense. We don’t have the density of population here, which is part of what makes this area attractive, but it undercuts the case for passenger rail service.
We’d rather see the $25 million being discussed here invested in a super-fast “bullet” train for the Albany to New York run. That’s another way you could bring train service closer, and link with this area through a bus. That idea was advanced by Gov. Douglas earlier in legislative session before it died a premature death, but it had a lot of merit, and would have filled a public transportation gap. But legislators weren’t interested, apparently.
Here’s another idea that would be a nifty use for the existing rail bed — a Rail Trail. Cover the existing tracks with a tarpaulin and gravel and convert them into a 50 mile round trip bike and hiking path between Manchester and Bennington. It would be a unique drawing card for our area. It’s pretty level. It would probably draw hundreds, maybe thousands, of hikers and bikers — and their disposable income. If it flopped, or we needed the tracks again because of a national emergency, you could pull up the covering and have the railroad back. People would likely find their way here to experience it, and they wouldn’t need a train from Albany or Rutland.
We have nothing against trains. They are fun. Let’s also have some common sense and look at the big picture. Restoring passenger rail service to Manchester and the surrounding region is one of those hardy perennials, that much like the spring flowers we hope to soon see blooming, pops up out of the ground every so often to beguile us with thoughts of accomplishing two things at once — giving our local economy a boost and doing the right thing environmentally.
Last week a group of area officials and businesspeople went to Montpelier to urge the State Senate Transportation Committee to look favorably upon extending passenger rail service south from Rutland, through Manchester and Bennington before veering west toward Albany, where passengers could board trains to New York City and elsewhere. To do that, the quality of the railroad tracks between Rutland and Manchester need an upgrade and other improvements made.
Like magic, a portion of the money coming to Vermont from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan may be available for transportation initiatives such this. The $25 million or so officials estimate would be required to bring the tracks up to snuff, along with other needed investments, might fold neatly into the larger picture of expanding passenger rail service elsewhere in the state.
Bennington County folks were motivated to jump into the haggling over how the rail money might get divvied up because of the possibility that the county could be shut out of passenger rail upgrades altogether. State officials could opt to expand passenger rail service south only from Burlington to Rutland, which could then link up with the already established Ethan Allen Amtrak Express — recently spared from the state budget ax — and move passengers over to Albany that way. Or they could start from the south and build north. The latter approach has the merit of being closer to the major population centers further south, and so ensure a higher level of ridership, but Burlington and Chittenden County have the political clout in the Legislature to make the northern extension of rail the first priority. If that happens, passenger rail from Rutland south through Bennington would probably be doomed, because our guess is that ridership on that link won’t be great enough to justify the cost.
But before we all get excited about the prospect of bringing passenger trains back to Manchester, we’d like to see a fair, objective study or analysis of how many passengers are really likely to ride the train. These sorts of decisions really need to be based on as much hard factual data as possible. Let’s not make investments based on wish-fulfillment or overly rosy scenarios. And let’s enter the “green” factor when that is more precisely quantifiable — not just a nice, moral virtue. We’re all for getting green, but sustainable decisions need an economic foundation. A component of rail service may be a gas tax — which would make for an incentive to travel by train. But that’s another issue.
Federal dollars may help upgrade the track, but they won’t pay for the train’s operation forever. That will be borne by state money — our tax dollars. Right now, the ridership on the Ethan Allen Express requires a federal and state subsidy of about $65 per passenger, on top of the price of the train ticket. The cost to the state treasury amounts to nearly $5 million per year.
We’re not sold yet that regular passenger train service is a panacea for local business, tourist-oriented or other. If it turns out it would be, great. But right now it takes longer, and costs more, for the typical visitor from downstate New York to arrive here by train, who is then faced with getting around a rural area with either a rented car, a van service or maybe, a bicycle. Until train service gets much faster, or the price drops significantly, or the price of gas shoots back into the $4-5 range (or higher), train service simply isn’t competitive. It may be fun, it may even be romantic, But until it’s an equitable dollars and cents match, it’s hard to see passenger rail being even close to a break-even alternative.
Here’s an idea we think does make some sense and may be worth exploring — light commuter rail. For much less money, upfront or otherwise, you could have a small two or three, highly automated passenger train car link from Manchester to Albany. Potentially, if the ridership were there, run several times a day. It wouldn’t require the level of track upgrades a full-blown heavy passenger rail service would, and would be sufficient to transport local residents who might want to travel to New York for the day or weekend and bring visitors to our neighborhood. People could live here and commute to work in Albany.
Train service is wonderful in the right places. Along the heavily populated Boston to Washington D.C. corridor, it makes an awful lot of sense. We don’t have the density of population here, which is part of what makes this area attractive, but it undercuts the case for passenger rail service.
We’d rather see the $25 million being discussed here invested in a super-fast “bullet” train for the Albany to New York run. That’s another way you could bring train service closer, and link with this area through a bus. That idea was advanced by Gov. Douglas earlier in legislative session before it died a premature death, but it had a lot of merit, and would have filled a public transportation gap. But legislators weren’t interested, apparently.
Here’s another idea that would be a nifty use for the existing rail bed — a Rail Trail. Cover the existing tracks with a tarpaulin and gravel and convert them into a 50 mile round trip bike and hiking path between Manchester and Bennington. It would be a unique drawing card for our area. It’s pretty level. It would probably draw hundreds, maybe thousands, of hikers and bikers — and their disposable income. If it flopped, or we needed the tracks again because of a national emergency, you could pull up the covering and have the railroad back. People would likely find their way here to experience it, and they wouldn’t need a train from Albany or Rutland.
We have nothing against trains. They are fun. Let’s also have some common sense and look at the big picture.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We’ve been following the whole debate about same-sex marriage along with everyone else, mulling over the positives and negatives. On balance, we think there are far fewer reasons to oppose it than support such a change, but it’s one of those subjects that raises a lot of passions on both sides of the question. That’s why we think the best way to sort this one out is to leave it to a public referendum, as has been suggested by Kevin Mullin, a state senator from Rutland, and who showed us a real “profile in courage” moment when he supported the bill when it got voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. He may pass a political price for that vote from disgruntled former supporters. A referendum would be the one true way of finding out what the real will of the state is on this question.
It’s quite clear that if it’s left to the Legislature, there will be a same-sex marriage law for Governor Douglas to sign. That would make Vermont the first state in the nation to have a same-sex marriage possibility that was passed by an act of the Legislature, as opposed to a judicial decision by a court of law. Douglas will then be placed in the position of having to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. None of those options are winners for him, which may be part of the whole idea.
Our first reaction to this issue is one of tolerance. Life is short, and if marrying a partner of the same sex is what works for two people, we’re inclined to give it a wave and a “God bless.” If it’s not harming somebody else or the people directly involved, then so what? Live and let live.
That’s still our basic feeling, but we wonder if there is another way to go about this. We haven’t seen any “Take back Vermont” movement emerging yet. We don’t think we will. We’ve all come a long way on this issue over the past decade. But it’s clear there are still strong feelings about this under the surface veneer of liberal, tolerant Vermont, and those voices deserve a hearing too. It would be fascinating to see what an actual poll of Vermonter’s feelings were on this issue. Our guesss is that opinion is pretty evenly divided.
In a perfect world, we wish the Legislature hadn’t chosen this moment to distract its attention from focusing on the very serious economic problems of the state. We know legislators think they can do two things at once — economic problem-solving and same-sex marriage — unfortunately the track record shows that they have a tough time even getting one thing right at a time. Every minute that state legislators aren’t focused on fixing the many problems the state is facing is hard to justify at a time when unemployment rates are high and people are worried about losing their jobs. The highest and best use of our lawmaker’s time would be spent hacking through the difficult knot of problems surrounding downsizing the state government so that it is sustainable — i.e.; the government runs roughly in balance in terms of what it spends and what the financial capacity of the state is to support it. If you want to re-grow the government, first help to grow the pie that it feeds off of. So let’s not get too diverted from that task by the culture war of same-sex marriage, please.
We would feel better if lawmakers had decided to take this up at nearer the end of the session, after they had grappled with the economic and government reform issues. But that’s water under the bridge now. What makes more sense would be to put this to a public vote. Ordinarily we aren’t always fond of this approach — it has wreaked havoc in California, a referendum-happy state —but this is a case where it may make some sense. It would make for a more accepted result by the losing side.
For two people of the same gender who find themselves in a committed, loving relationship that has endured for at least a few years, we don’t see the harm in going forward from a civil union to a formal marriage. Nor is there any evidence that a same-sex couple can’t be terrific parents, and the harmonious household they can craft is probably a better place for children than that likely to be supplied by unhappily married “traditional” husbands and wives. We don’t buy into the Biblical interpretation that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and we don’t see where the institution of traditional marriage between a man and a woman is under any kind of threat from the relative handful of people who might want to opt for a same sex marriage. In the same breath, let’s also be aware that traditional marriages play an important role in gluing a society together. A good deal of our major social issues today, from educational underachievement all the way along the spectrum of anti-social, lawbreaking behavior is heavily influenced by family. It’s just something to think about before we move on.
We don’t think there’s any major downside risk to the economy of the state should Vermont become the first state to have its legislature craft a law which sanctifies same-sex marriage. For every potential tourist who skips Vermont because of that we’ll probably pick up other visitors who will be excited by it. Certainly the tourist economy didn’t suffer because of the divisive civil unions debate of 2000. It because of 9/11, but not because of civil unions.
We urge the legislature to get through this quickly. The senate Judiciary Committee got things off to a good start last week. But if it should become bogged down in a lot of rancor and debate when the bill goes to the House, the public referendum option deserves a serious hearing.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Senator Patrick Leahy would be doing everyone a favor if he took his poorly thought-out proposal for a Truth Commission to investigate wrongdoing in the Bush Administration and shoved it back into the dark recesses of his desk.
That questionable conduct and activity occurred during the previous administration when it came the politicization of the Justice Department and wiretapping of U.S. citizens, to say nothing of the manner in which the war in Iraq was sold to the American public, has been reasonably well-documented. What Leahy is hoping to accomplish beyond scoring some partisan political points is another question.
The track record of such commissions is decidedly mixed. The hearings held during the mid-1970s on the CIA’s alleged misconduct during the previous decades may have uncovered wrongdoing that deserved seeing the light of day, but also wreaked enormous institutional harm on the agency that had repercussions all the way to 9/11. And the other parallel, the truth and reconciliation commission held in South Africa as a means of helping that nation come to terms with its Apartheid past, is also one that led to results that, at least in terms of reconciliation, would have probably happened anyway. Meanwhile, south Africa remains a less than shining example of political courage and leadership. Look no further than neighboring Zimbabwe.
Voices on both the political left and right have decried Leahy’s idea — the right sees a partisan witchhunt and the left fears a sell-out. We’re in agreement with President Obama on this one. Rather than going backwards and re-hashing the bitter feuds of recent years, let’s move forward.
The nation and its leaders have a lot of work to do right now, getting our economy back on track and winding down the Iraq War in a responsible way. Then, it’s on, unfortunately, to a prolonged engagement in Afghanistan, one which shows all the earmarks of being a long-term Korea-style involvement. Plus, we’ve got all those other put-off-for-too-long problems, like fixing healthcare, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and moving towards a greater degree of energy independence through renewable sources, a transition that will be much more difficult than many seem to think.
The big problem with Leahy’s idea is one of context. If wrongdoing occurred, it should be punished, but that should come through the court system. Should former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales go to jail for agreeing to illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens without first securing the proper warrants? Should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — or even President Bush himself — be prosecuted for the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Perhaps, but then a great deal of testimony on the justification of these extreme measures should also be allowable, which will take us back to the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when no responsible leader or politician wanted to be on the wrong side of an incorrect guess about where the terrorists were going to strike next. It gets complicated very quickly. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architects of the misguided war policy on Iraq, probably should undergo some sort of de-briefing on what they thought they were doing, but historians and journalists have begun that already. Meanwhile, they thought they were doing what they needed to do to protect the country. It’s a tough call. It’s also safe to say that it will be a long time before any future administration goes down the same road as Bush, Cheney et. al — unless there’s a really good reason.
The possibilities for excessive politicization of a commission along the lines of what Leahy is proposing are enormous, and to most members of Congress, at least those who sense a winning hand, perhaps irresistible. If the idea goes forward, kiss away for good all that happy talk about bipartisan cooperation to solve the serious problems facing the nation, which we kind of like to think most people are ready for. It’s a big part of how Obama got elected, after all.
Maybe it’s all in the timing. If Leahy could have simply found it within himself to wait a little bit and let some dust settle, it might seem different. Right now, let’s move on. We think maybe Senator Leahy has been drinking too much Kool Aid from Brattleboro.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We understand that in these difficult financial times, the state has to look under every rock, nook and cranny to find potential savings. One area of cutting back that seems counterproductive to us, however, is the proposal to close down all the state’s rest areas, at least for the time being.
Tourism, as we all know, if one of the state’s biggest, if not the biggest, industries. Unlike other places where the state spends money with no direct financial return, investment in tourism, which is already at a pathetically low level in relation to the economic activity it generates, creates jobs and wealth. Frequently, these are jobs that are critical to the financial well-being of typical, ordinary Vermonters.
We understand that in times like these, everyone has to take their lumps, but there’s a difference between cutting crudely and cutting intelligently. Closing rest areas, where family-run tourist businesses have a chance to display brochures and attract patrons, is an example of the former. There are surely other places where the state spends taxpayer dollars without any prospect of a monetary return on investment. Keep the rest areas open.

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 
Back when I lived in New York City, one of my favorite pleasures was getting the Sunday New York Times on Saturday night.
Back in that now-quaint pre-digital era, it seemed so neat, on the back end of a night of socializing or movie-going about Manhattan, to pick up a copy of tomorrow's paper that night before boarding the subway for a ride back to one of the "outer boroughs" as they were called - Brooklyn in my case. Whatever you didn't finish reading late Saturday night or early - as in very early- Sunday morning, would be waiting for you later that day. No need to get dressed to head out to the newsstand to get the day properly launched before you had the requisite amount of coffee.
Now I realize that poring over the Sunday Times isn't everybody's idea of a capstone of a thrilling Saturday night on the town, but it worked for me, most of time.
So awhile back I informed the Journal's readers that I was finally going to take the big plunge and experiment with modern day equivalent - online newspaper reading - to see if it cured me of a 40-year-old addiction to print journalism. Things took longer than I thought - the Internet connection on my home computer flaked out - and I got knocked off course for a few weeks, but now, about a month later, I've tested the waters sufficiently and have come to some conclusions about it all, just in time, it seems, to join in a growing chorus of writers and journalists who have made a not-so-small cottage industry out of analyzing what's to become of old-style newspapers you hold in your hand  in the era of electronic web-based ones.
Not that concerns about the future of the printed paper are anything new. For the past couple of years at least, those in the industry have been aware of two disturbing trends - circulation was falling, and advertising revenue was sinking along with it.
It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. Readers were migrating to the Web-based versions of newspapers, where the content (most of it, anyway) was being offered for free, instead of the 50-75 cents the traditional newspaper sold for. Blogs and other entirely new sources of news were emerging to challenge the newspaper's role as the gatekeeper of information. Advertisers, convinced that this was were the eyeballs were headed, and where the advertising costs were less, responded accordingly, and have cut back on advertising in the newspaper.
In this week's issue of Time Magazine, Walter Isaacson, a very distinguished writer, historian and former managing editor of Time addressed the issue of long term survivability for newspapers when they are in effect competing against themselves - expecting their readers to fork over $5 to $7 ($14 in the case of the Times, if you buy it daily)  a week for a paper they can read for free on the Internet. Even Isaacson admitted he doesn't buy the New York Times anymore. Makes me feel like a bit of a dope for still doing so. 
Here's the big newsflash for all you readers in this piece - sooner or later, you are going to be asked to pay for this content that we in the newspaper business have been happy to give you for free. We've taught you that, by golly, it should be free. It's not of course. It costs money to have reporters go out and cover stories, and to have photographers shoot pictures and even have editors like me edit them. We prefer not to eat grass anymore than you do. But we've treated the online versions of our newspapers like a financial throwaway, while falling over ourselves to figure out better ways to keep you from buying a newspaper.
Even blogs or other online news sources, sooner or later, need a person to go out there and ferret out the news, just like the good old days.
There's all kinds of creative things going on in the newspaper world to stave off the death of a document you can read while holding it in your hands, but all of these technological marvels are still a few years off. So what did I find I liked about the online papers?
I stuck mostly to my favorites - The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. I also read the Rutland Herald and Burlington Free Press. The Web sites of the Bennington Banner and the Manchester Journal I was already very familiar with. I already look at them everyday.
So here's what I loved - you got the news when it was happening. Stories were being uploaded to the Web continuously, and I'd often have a sense of deja vu when I'd read the headline of a story  the next morning that I read the night before. And there is all this extra content - blogs, opinion stuff, opportunities for reader interaction, video and audio interviews. It was like Dorothy being swept out of black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz.  
Hands down, the Times's Web site is the best. I didn't bother with the Wall Street Journal, although I bet theirs is pretty good too. That's because the Journal charges you money - $103 a year or $1.99 per week to subscribe - a total bargain compared to the printed version. If you worked in financial services or in some heavy duty business environment, it would be indispensable. For my purposes right now, I'll stick with reading the print version a couple of times a week. The Journal (the other Journal, that is, the one published on Wall Street) has some great editorial and opinion pieces that come at things from a conservative slant, rare in mainstream media today, so I like the diversity with the Times's liberal bent. And anyway, the Wall Street Journal, like every other newspaper it seems, is losing money, so they need the $4 or so I spend on them each week. Rupert Murdoch may be a strange guy, but even he's worth $4.
So I loved all this cool content the big boys were able to get on their sites. The Free Press and the Herald - well, they weren't bad, but it was pretty much an electronic regurgitation of the print paper, with the occasional spot of breaking news. All well and good, but not enough to make me want to throw their newspapers under the bus, because despite all that cool content, one thing was still missing.
You've already guessed it, if, like me, you're of "a certain age." I spend a significant chunk of my day staring at a computer screen, and reading a paper online just isn't the same relaxing experience as flipping through a newspaper on my couch or easy chair with a cup of coffee close at hand.  Plus, with reading a paper, I tend to read more of the story. Online, I read headlines, and if a story interests me, I'll click on the link and read it. It makes getting through the paper a lot faster an experience, but less complete. It's like I'm searching for the things I already know about. When I flip through paper, I might read a story about some off-the-beaten track place or situation that I never would have read online. It takes longer but I get more out of it.
It doesn't feel like work, either. It's a break in the action that feeds the mind and the soul.
And here's a tip for all you advertisers out there - I really, really don't look at the ads online that much either. Print advertising - it works. That's why you are being asked to pay more for it.
So I'm not ready to give up the old-fashioned newspaper just yet. But there's no doubt where the future is coming from. I realize I'm way behind the curve here, even as I've tried to make upgrading the Manchester Journal's Web site a priority. Here, we've been trying to load more stories faster, particularly during that yawning gap of time between issues. A week is a long time in this business. Time is our currency. A story that is cutting edge on Friday is old news by the following Tuesday. So we've been trying, and will go on trying, to push stories onto our Web site as soon as possible, along with the photo journals, the poll questions and the blog. Video and audio are beckoning. I continually find myself thinking about all the possibilities the technology presents.
I did all my online exploring without the obvious tool that makes news reading off of the Web a lot easier, I would think, anyway - the venerable laptop computer. It sure looks like fun to be surfing the Web wirelessly from some coffeeshop, anyway. I'm still desktop bound. Maybe that's the sequel to this.
I'm sure the guy who sold me the Sunday Times on Saturday night 30 years ago in New York never contemplated a virtual, electronic newsstand would put him out of business. They were hard to psyche out anyway, as they wordlessly made change and shoved the bulky paper with all those sections I never read (Travel? Where was I going to go? Real Estate? I could barely keep up with my monthly rent ). That's the other nice thing about the electronic paper - no pile of newsprint to recycle. But when they do finally go under, it will be sad - one more piece of life as we knew it that seemed eternal will be no more. Hopefully a way will have been found to replicate the sense of relaxation on the easy chair. We're not there yet.
 

Posted by Andrew McKeever at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)