Sumner Shortcuts

Some days I feel really bad for newspapers.  It’s becoming tougher and tougher for them to stay afloat.  Competition from other news sources like blogs and cable networks combined with a recession have forced many of the nation’s major newspapers to fold. 

The Tennessean is still alive… mostly.  And that’s a good thing, I guess.  I certainly don’t want local papers to die. 

But I do hate seeing one particular “stay afloat” trend:  using articles written by wire services or sister papers instead of local people.  Case in point:  Today’s Tennessean movie review for Star Trek–a movie I badly want to see.  The review byline is this:

By Bill Goodykoontz • THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC • May 8, 2009

Look, I’m sure Bill Goodykoontz is a swell guy (though surely not half as swell as that sweet last name of his).  I’m sure he is a fine film critic.  But if I can’t read a review from a fellow Nashvillian, then I want to read one by a critic I’ve actually heard of… someone fairly prominent.  Like Ebert or Roper or whatever.  This review might as well have been written by some janitor named Steve in Fort Wayne, IN.  How do I have any idea whether or not to trust this fellow’s opinion? 

It’s all the more maddening when you consider that a good friend of mine–who happens to be a fantastic writer and lover of movies–offered to write reviews for the Tennessean for free just so they’d have a local reviewer… and he couldn’t get the time of day from them.  For months he tried.  He writes the reviews anyway for his own blog.  I guess the editor was too busy copying and pasting Mr. Goodykoontz’s review to check their emails. 

So this is the future of news.  Soon there will be only a small pool of faceless AP writers, and every newspaper in the country will carry the same articles.  What a shame. 

Please note… I’m not ripping on the Tennessean here–though they often give me plenty of reasons to rip them.  I’m just bemoaning the state of news.  It sucks that our local paper is filled with articles written by people who have probably never even been to Nashville.  But that’s the way it is for now, I guess.