I'm probably the only one who notices or cares, but several weeks ago, the News-Gazette did a three- or four-part series of front page articles about Rantoul and how poorly the Village is doing since Chanute Air Force Base closed.
This weekend, they repeated the genre - this time doing a big spread on Newman, a small town in northeastern Douglas County, and how badly it's suffered since Hydromat closed.
Hopes in Newman, about 15 miles east of Tuscola on U.S. 36, were high in the spring of 1989 as word began to spread of a new industry coming to town, bringing new jobs.
A 66,000-square-foot facility, built at a cost of about $18 million at a site west of Newman off U.S. 36, opened that fall with about 100 workers for then-owner Recontek.
Now, the plant sits idle and four key company officials have pleaded guilty to federal charges for lying to state and environmental agencies. Among those is Julianne Bauter, a former human resource officer and environmental officer with Hydromet. She is also the wife of Newman Mayor Phil Bauter and is due to be sentenced Thursday.
Is it just me, or is the NG getting to be relentlessly negative?
When was the last time they ran a four-day series of articles about the positive side of a small town? (The recovery of St. Joe/Ogden from the tornado, for example...)
When was the last time they went out of their way to accentuate the positive side of a local development or opportunity?
I'm sure they've done it, but it just feels like they've been very negative about almost everything for the past several years. Am I mistaken?
UPDATE: Another great example of this, which a good friend brought to my attention, was the scathing editorial they wrote about New Jersey Governor John Corzine, a UI Alum who got into a car accident while speeding and not wearing a seat belt. For some reason, the NG felt compelled to write a completely inconsequential editorial blasting him, even while he was still in the hospital. Of course, you'll have to pay a few bucks to read the old editorial now - but why would you want to?
IP - I completely agree with you. The News-Gazette seems to dislike everything. No change is positive. No government official does anything good in any City they serve. No business person can be trusted. The sky is always falling. It's a very grumpy-old-man paper.
Isn't Illini Pundit the same way? The only posts that have action are the negative ones (smoking, MTD, etc). Even the Friday's Funnies gets heckled. We have become a very 'glass is always half empty' society.
I thought some time ago there was an article about how well Rantoul did after the base left--I think there was discussion about the former mayor and her efforts to combat the base closing. Am I remembering that wrong? If you compare the News Gazette to to other papers, I suspect that they wouldn't be any more negative--politics and society as a whole seems to be more negative and more critical.
"Isn't Illini Pundit the same way?"
Gosh, I hope not.
On the last ten blog posts - some of which weren't written by me - there's five "negative" stories, but at least four (Podcast, Tax Receipts, FOIA Seminar, Gutenberg) that have nothing negative to say. In just the past few weeks, I've written about Orchard Downs, a Soldier's mother, Digg, Instant runoff voting, an RSS tutorial, etc. And the day after the municipal elections, I was told that I was too happy. :-)
Anyway, I hope weren't not that negative. I'll be paying closer attention now, though. You've gotten me worried.
I'd be curious to know how the N-G compares to other newspapers in terms of negativity. It doesn't seem much different than the Herald-Review, the Pantagraph, or the State Journal-Register.
IP,
I couldn't agree more. The piece on Rantoul was very one sided and very negative. It pointed out every negative that it could find about the village, but failed to point out any of the positives and yes there are some. Do we have challenges and do we have problems? Sure, but what town, village or city doesn't? I don't know if we live a sheltered life, but I live in Rantoul and I didn't recognize the village that they were describing and others that I have talked to didn't either. I tried to figure out what the motivation would be to write an article such as the one on Rantoul and Newman but I can't figure out what it would be. I know that there are people in town who never take the paper for this reason and I know there were a number of people who stopped taking the paper following this article. I married my wife in 1990 right about when Chanute was closing and at that time Rantoul was really struggling. Business's were closing and people were moving away. Imagine how Champaign would be if the U of I pulled out of town. I moved back here in 1996 with my wife and we made Rantoul our home. I know that since 1996 Rantoul has bounced back tremendously. Is it back to where it was? No, and it never will be, but what was the old base has now been transformed into factories (jobs), an air field, a golf course with a nice restraunt, housing (some bad and some good), a state of the art water park, and an abundance of sports facilities (ball diamonds, gyms and Camp Rantoul). I travel through a lot of different towns with my job and I believe that Rantoul has one of the prettiest downtowns in Illinois. We're expanding to the west by the interstate with new restraunts, a Super Wal-Mart (with more retail building around it) and further to the west expansion to the industrial park (more jobs). Did they mention any of these positives in their article? I didn't see it if they did. There are many other positve things happening in Rantoul and there are always activities going on. If you haven't visited in a while, take a drive north and see for yourself. Thanks IP !
Kevin Hunt
I'm usually not a defender of the N-G, but they did a story in April about Arthur being one of the top 100 places to visit. Also in April was the article about Tuscola on the CBS new. This month they spotlighted Monticello and Allerton Park for making the list of "wonders."
All in all, I don't think they are any more negative than most papers. Bad news does sell soap.
What do you expect, the News-Gazette is a joke, no real NEWS in the the paper, a web site that looks like some 6 year old designed it. You get more news on the Illini Pundit site. I stopped my subscription long ago and do not miss it at all. I get more sports coverage on the net for free from the Decatur-Herald. Like I said in the past about the NG their slogan should be "If it's news...It's news to us" What a sorry excuse for a news paper.
Rather than comparing the wroN-G to the other Illinois papers, you should be comparing it to the dailies in the other Big 10 cities.
I'm short on time here, so I can't really do a comprehensive analysis, but here's my very rough ranking:
(1) Columbus, Ohio
(2) Ann Arbor, Mich.
(3) Madison, Wisc.
(4) Lansing, Mich.
(5) Minneapolis
(6) Bloomington, Ind.
(7) wroN-G
(8) Lafayette, Ind.
I left out Evanston because of its proximity to Chicago, and I'm not familiar enough with the papers in Iowa City and State College, Pa. The wroN-G is fortunate that Lafayette has been obsessing about design and has been dropping off.
To be fair, four of those papers are in state capitals -- Columbus, Madison, Lansing and Minneapolis.
As a recent transplant and news junkie, I can assure you (based on my totally unscientific anecdotal evidence) that the N-G is precisely the opposite of how you paint it. I have never seen any paper engage in the sort of boosterism that the N-G does. If you want cynical, the Chicago Tribune is available at fine newstands everywhere. Of course, they certainly have a lot more to be cynical about, while the N-G has a lot more to be boostering. But with that said, is Allerton really one of the seven wonders of Illinois? Not to be a big city snob, but that list of seven wonders should probably start and end in the Chicago area (or perhaps include the Cohokia mounds, but that's it). Does Allerton really deserve to be on the same list as the tallest buildings in Chicago, the best work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chicago stadiums, or O'Hare? I enjoy the charms of the area as much as anybody, but key to the charm is the fact that everything here is more modest, and that everyone here understands that the man-made wonders are in Chicago, while we get the natural stuff (like an earth-shaking summer storm). The N-G runs a ton of good news, with lots of fluff pieces on people getting awards, profiles of professors' obscure research work, brave kids fighting deadly diseases - and what the heck is wrong with that anyway? I like that fact that there's more good news to report here than bad. Plus, how could they ignore a company closing down, devastating a local community, with company officials (including the mayor's wife) going to jail?
you could make a case for virtually anything by selective sample.
if you pick and choose allerton as a seven wonder, or boosting the Chief, or sick kids, the N-G is a booster, fluffy paper.
if the day's paper happens to have a lot of crime, a plant closing etc, it's a negative paper.
not a very sound wayt to do media criticism. as for wenalway, simply saying all those Big Ten newspapars are better than the N-G, without giving any argument for why, is name-calling, not analysis.
and with wenalway, you don't have to pick and choose. he's always negative
"Does Allerton really deserve to be on the same list as the tallest buildings in Chicago, the best work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chicago stadiums, or O'Hare?"
I would answer that with a qualified yes, since the only list Soldier Field and O'Hare belong on is one consisting of the worst abominations in the state.
Anon 11:50 (again, can everyone at least use some name?):
You must have missed the following sentence:
[size=50pt][b]I'm short on time here, so I can't really do a comprehensive analysis, but here's my very rough ranking:[/b][/size]
So, if you've stopped your subscription "long ago", then how exactly do you know it's a joke?
I stopped reading the NG about 4 years ago. I am old enough to remember when a newspaper reported news, not the constant negativity that you read in most so called news papers. You "Mr. Anonymous" can continue to read that rag of a paper and support the millionaires that run it. As for the comment that was made about the town of Newman, John Forman should have gone a little farther west to his own hometown of Hammond, now that's a town that has evolved into a ghost town. In regard to your question of how I know the NG is a joke, It was a joke of a paper then and I'm sure it has only gotten worse.
wenalyway, your comparisons are a joke.
columbus ohio has a metro population of 1.7 million, 10 times that of C-U, even if you include Bondville.
wayward is correct is saying the N-G should be compared to Decatur, Bloomington, Springfield, Peoria -- all about the same size in the same area, all of which have universities in them
where is the hub when you need it?
Logically, CHampaign should compete with CHicago and CHarlottesville
Charleston?
Anon 11:23 (again, can people sign in with names?):
Comparing the wroN-G to the other Illinois papers makes little to no sense. C-U and friends are home to a major, acclaimed university. If the wroN-G is better than the crappy little rags in the other cookie-cutter towns in this state, it's because it should be.
yeah. columbus is much better. we're almost identical. sports conference is really the only measure of any city
Mister? Are you making an assumption about gender without checking your facts?
So it's OK to opine on something when your most recent familiarity with it is four years ago? The Cubs almost beat the Marlins in 2003; I'm sure they've won the World Series by now.
And which millionaires run the paper, exactly? Maybe, having not read the paper for four years, you missed the part where Marajen Chinigo died -- without descendants. Oops. She died in 2002, when you were probably still reading the rag.
From what I understand, the Chinigo trust pays for the wroN-G operations. I'm sure the executors, even if they are not zillionaires, are very well compensated.
Apparently one of the stipulations is that the paper remain independent of other chains. That's all well and good, but that doesn't ensure the paper is as good as it could be.
I tend to think the paper is more positive than negative, as long as it's toward its HSQD buddies. For example, it would not surprise me if the wroN-G had the Lipitor idiocy as its mission statement. "It comes from this pie, creamy banana, or your mom, Julianna!" They probably think that's some great stuff.
Good point, Wenalway. The wroN-G is stuck in the mud, at least editorially. It only likes that which happened yesterday and it's scared of everything else.
Hee Hee, that's pretty funny. :D
For example, it would not surprise me if the wroN-G had the Lipitor idiocy as its mission statement. "It comes from this pie, creamy banana, or your mom, Julianna!" They probably think that's some great stuff.
As much as I don't like the N-G and see more negative, they did have a good positive article about the kids from Catlin High School and a predominantly black high school on the South Side doing an exchange/meet&greet. They do occastionally slip up and let a positive story slip through...
Gregg, you're just as anonymous as I am.
IP, not all of the blogs on this site are negative, but the ones with all of the comments are the controversial ones, and some of those comments are very negative. I am not saying that is a bad thing (I read them because they are sometimes entertaining), I am just trying to make a point of you being a little hypocritical about your own site versus the N-G. Nobody would look at this site if you talked about roses all day. Maybe with the N-G having declining sales, they are turning up the controversy knob. It got you to talk about it.
"I am just trying to make a point of you being a little hypocritical about your own site versus the N-G. Nobody would look at this site if you talked about roses all day."
I don't think that's fair - I think you should consider the articles and comments seperately when accusing me of hypocrisy.
I can control the level of negativity in my articles, as can the NG, as well as in our editorial positions.
Comments are a whole different ball of wax, as the NG is just starting to find out now. That'd be like me criticizing the NG for the negativity in their Letters to the Editor.
Except the N-G does not further along (either on a positive or negative level) letters to the editor. To say that you are just a moderator is a stretch. You don't just create blogs for intellectual stimulation, like an editor would. You interact with the posts, some that you did not create (yes, you comment) .
I am not attacking you or this site. I learn a lot of the politcal insights of the area on this site. But when I am looking for a spinster or a controversial topic for some raunchy yet entertaining reading, I don't turn to the N-G, I turn to illinipundit.com.
"To say that you are just a moderator is a stretch."
I'm not anything close to a moderator. I don't approve comments, and I've deleted less than ten in the last six months.
"You don't just create blogs for intellectual stimulation, like an editor would."
I do this all the time - posting articles without any editorial comment at all.
"You interact with the posts, some that you did not create (yes, you comment) ."
Yes - should I be held responsible for the negativity of those with whom I interact?
"I am not attacking you or this site. I learn a lot of the politcal insights of the area on this site. But when I am looking for a spinster or a controversial topic for some raunchy yet entertaining reading, I don't turn to the N-G, I turn to illinipundit.com."
Thanks - I appreciate that. I readily admit to controversy and even some negativity on here, but I don't think, as an editorial policy, that we're nearly as negative as the NG. But I can agree to disagree.