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February 10, 2012
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Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
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Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
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Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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January 11, 2012
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Nov. 22, 2005
/ 20 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766
Remember this: Newspapers are vital
By
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It was the week after the storm and Biloxi, Miss., was a wilderness.
James Bates, a photographer for the Sun Herald newspaper, had agreed to show me around but first he had to provision the car with emergency supplies. I don't remember what all he crammed into his backseat. I do remember what sat on top: a stack of newspapers.
Biloxi was cut off from the world, so the paper was a lifeline. Bates told me people were amazingly grateful when you gave them one. Small wonder. In doing so, you gave them information. You also gave them human society. You made them less alone.
I find myself returning to that post-Katrina episode a lot lately as people in the newspaper business try to make me feel better about working in the newspaper business. Actually, it's not just me they seek to encourage, but all of us who are employed by the 32 papers in the Knight Ridder chain.
As you may have seen on the business page, three groups of shareholders are pushing the Knight Ridder board of directors to put the nation's second-largest newspaper company up for sale. This, because stock prices continue to slip despite aggressive cost-cutting measures. The shareholder revolt has created uncertainty in KR newsrooms and, I would wager, newspaper newsrooms around the country.
After all, this is an uncertain time in the newspaper business. Between the lies of Jack Kelley [formerly of USA Today, not JWR's] and Jayson Blair, the drumbeat accusations of liberal or conservative bias, the new figures showing that readership continues to erode like beaches and an abiding sense that today's young adults lack the time and inclination to read news printed on dead trees, newsroom morale is at less than an all-time high.
And the hits just keep on coming. In response to the shareholder pressure Knight Ridder announced this week that it would explore all its options, including sale of the company.
So you can understand the effort to rally the troops. On Sunday, Amanda Bennett, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a KR paper, published a column attacking the "common wisdom" that newspapers are dying because of either competition from television (the Philly papers and their Web sites, she wrote, reach more people than the newscasts on the top three local TV stations combined), from radio (a story in the paper reaches more people than one broadcast in drive-time on all 83 Philly stations combined) or from the Internet ("We are the Internet," wrote Bennett, noting that her paper reaches more people online than any other local site).
In response, Miami Herald Managing Editor Judy Miller (not to be confused with the ex-New York Times reporter of the same name) issued an interoffice e-mail to her troops making essentially the same points about her paper's influence.
Given all that and the fact that the newspapers still routinely return profits of 20 percent, you have to wonder: from whence the woe? Why is revenue down? Why the cuts in staffing and benefits? Why do investors circle this industry like vultures?
I guess there are reasons. I'm just saying I don't understand them. I doubt I ever will.
I'm also saying this: Thank you for the pep talk but me, I don't need it. Years before I ever drew a paycheck in this industry I was convinced that newspapers and, more broadly, the news are not a business. They are a mission a vital, irreducible mission.
I guess that's why my thoughts keep returning to that parking lot in Biloxi. Inside the damaged building, dozens of journalists, volunteers from all over the country and locals who had just lost loved ones and homes in the storm, were subsisting on cheese and canned ham, wearing donated clothes, working the phones, designing pages ... putting out the paper. A bundle of which James Bates threw into the car so we could give them to people we met, people who needed them.
It was a pep talk that will last me a lifetime.
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© 2005, The Miami Herald Distributed by TMS
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