Odds and odds: Gleanings from the Web

[UPDATE - Jan. 6: Now comes word that the McCook Daily Gazette, mentioned below, is also cutting back in the face of hard times for the newspaper industry. Not only no Sunday edition, but, by the end of the month, no Saturday edition, either.
   Sigh.]

  You may have learned to read from Dick and Jane or My Weekly Reader. I learned from The Omaha World-Herald. [My kindergarten teacher was not amused.]
  As a small child in the small town of McCook, Nebraska, I joined my parents in pouring over the Herald seven days a week. I particularly remember the Sunday funnies, such as Smokey Stover. It, the smaller evening paper, The McCook Daily Gazette [good, but no Sunday edition] and Life magazine were as close as anything in that very small town at the intersection of US 6 and US 83 to today's World Wide Web.
   Thus a pang when I read the other day -- on the Herald's Web site, of course -- that the Herald will no longer offer same-day delivery to 12,000 subscribers in the western parts of the state, including McCook. [It's 294 miles from Omaha to McCook. I know because I looked it up on Google Maps.] Says The World-Herald, in a statement that's become familiar around the industry:

The World-Herald has made these changes to strengthen its position to provide quality news and advertising services while addressing challenging economic conditions, rising newsprint expenses and higher operating and distribution costs.

   The newspaper's content is, of course, online. Many young people prefer it that way, anyhow. And the Herald now owns a few of the newspapers in central and western Nebraska, forming a news service that will share articles and supposedly improve the coverage of the state for all concerned.
   Still.

   Today's Denver Post has this article about how the leadership of the University of Colorado is pushing to be set free of the Colorado Legislature to make its own policies, set tuitions, etc., so as to make better use of whatever funds it has and so as to raise more from the private, entrepreneurial sector. That sounds familiar.

   Today's Hutchinson (Kansas) News [a newspaper that helped teach my younger siblings how to read -- and write -- ] has an article about how the Western Kansas city of Tribune and the surrounding Greeley County have merged into a single government. That sounds a little bit familiar, too.
   [Extra points for knowing why it makes sense for Tribune to be in Greeley County.]

-- George Pyle/Editorial Writer

   

   

Comments

[Chris]

George,
Thanks for possibly driving a few more readers my way, and I appreciate the real writer looking in on my stuff. Happy New Year.