I'm too lazy to write letters to the editor

Actually, I have written several, but they very rarely are printed. That's part of the reason I started this blog.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times has really gone downhill in the last five years or so. I blame a combination of the merger with the Albany Democrat-Herald and the parent company, which clearly states that the top priorities are "Grow revenue creatively and rapidly" and "Increase readership and circulation." News is third on the list. Companies are supposed to protect the bottom line. But a news organization has a special responsibility: providing accurate information to the readers. That should always be top priority. People want to read the news; they will pay for a good newspaper. Advertising will never be the top priority for the majority of subscribers.

After working at the GT and one of Lee's other papers for several years, I know how they select the news. They sell advertising first, then determine how much space is left for actual news. They have a few underpaid reporters to handle local stories (and the really good ones quickly move on to larger papers), sometimes merely taking national news and finding some local ties that might be newsworthy, and then the rest of the space is plugged with AP wire stories. These AP stories are sometimes missing entire paragraphs, even ending in the middle of a sentence.

So, what prompts the rant? Since the merger, Hasso Hering of the Democrat-Herald has been handed the Sunday editorial page for his often bizarre pseudoconservative rants. Teresa Novak, the GT opinion page editor, ends up writing a secondary editorial at the bottom of the page, often a fluff piece. This Sunday's Novak editorial was really just sad.

Ms. Novak writes about Comcast's new price hike for expanded basic cable, which could be considered newsworthy. However, while she briefly touches on attempts to deregulate cable and unbundle packaging so that consumers can select their favored channels without paying for those other channels, the editorial primarily makes the bold statement that it's hard to live without cable TV.

Huh? I haven't had cable TV in years. Who wants to support a monopoly? We briefly had satellite TV, but then realized that one episode of Iron Chef each week didn't really justify the cost, even though satellite was cheaper than cable. So we at the Corvallist household actually make do with the somewhat fuzzy Eugene and Portland local stations, when we watch anything other than Netflix. Nobody in our house is unduly suffering from this shocking neo-Luddism.

I can understand making the statement that a phone is a necessity (not cell phones, but that's another article). I can even support the idea that, in these modern times, a computer is a necessity. But TV? For someone who makes a living working for the written press? No.