Non-explained
I criticized the local news for not covering the fact that the Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam belongs to an anti-gun group. Rich, who happened to be at the News Sentinel when I had my panties all bunched up, says:
On the day in question, both the A and B sections of the paper were running long, and stories were getting bumped and trimmed to fit. I sat in on the final budget meeting of the day, and while Uncle’s story never came up, it was clear that there simply wasn’t room for another story. Add that to the balancing issues I discussed earlier, and you can understand more about how the story about Knoxville’s top bachelor made the cut.
It’s not a perfect business; there’s always going to be compromise.
So, what about the next day? Or the day after that? Or, say, today? Or tomorrow? Remember, your average Knoxvillian still likely has no idea. Further, Rich says:
But here’s the thing that Uncle is forgetting; the KNS did publish a story about it. They published Uncle’s story via Michael’s blog. And assuming that the blogs are archived just like the rest of the online content, any searches on Haslam and Bloomberg will pull up Uncle’s post. Think about that for a second. A private citizen, writing anonymously, can publish a hard news story on a MSM website.
While I applaud Knoxnews for allowing anonymous folks to publish news, it is a matter of distribution. I don’t know what the Sentinel’s distribution is. Nor do I know how much traffic their website gets. But I’d say more Knoxvillians read the dead tree version and main website than read Michael’s blog. Their site has a Google rank of 7. Michael’s blog has a Google rank of 6. So does my site. Their main page is read much more and I know this because when their main page links to me, I get more traffic than when Michael’s blog links to me.
So, my original point remains: The average Knoxvillian has no idea that their mayor belongs to an anti-gun group funded by the Joyce Foundation.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Uncle has a good point. On Jack McElroy’s blog Jack gives his thoughts on circulation of the KNS. I wouldn’t think any KNS blog has more than 2500 hits a day, 4000 max. Big difference compared to a daily circulation of 120,088. KNS uses their blogs as an excuse not to publish news that advertisers might object to. It is a cowardly practice that needs to be exposed.
October 20th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I don’t know what the Sentinel’s distribution is.
Morning Circulation: 115,941
Saturday Circulation: 128,521
Sunday Circulation: 153,779
October 20th, 2006 at 10:10 am
You people all high and mighty with your research.
😉
October 20th, 2006 at 10:21 am
So, what I got out of that was, if someone is looking for a story about the mayor’s involvement with Bloomie’s group, they can find it. That’s all good and fine, but, um, anyone who would do that already knows about his involvement.
That, and the fact that they let the little, anonymous people post stories. That no one will see.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Rust has nailed it. If you hadn’t been alerted at least a little you wouldn’t know to look for it, now would you?
For instance, here in SW Ar. I have no reason to search my property for polar bears. However, if I had been informed that one escaped from a nearby circus train, I might have a clue to at least watch out.
October 20th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Uncle, I wasn’t there on the following days, but my guess is that since the KNS didn’t really consider Bloomberg’s looniness news, it wasn’t news when Haslam dove into the loony bin with him.
You are right, the average Knoxvillian still doesn’t know about either Bloomberg or Haslam, but I question whether the average Knoxvillian would care. At least, not until Haslam is up for re-election. ON the other hand, the average gun owner in Knoxville has been alerted by your posts here and at the KNS. Come election time, this issue will come back to bite Haslam, and the KNS blog will have played a part in it.
#9, are you seriously suggesting that the KNS is trying to hide news by posting it on the internet, where it is available forever to anybody who wants to look for it?
October 20th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
To my reading, the KNS is saying, “We find certain facts inconvenient, so if you want them so damned bad, quit reading our paper, get internet service, and read Uncle.”
On that note, I heard this morning that the NYT and several other old and super-duper-important papers none of us can live without are talking about major layoffs due to reduced readership.
This week I got a snail-mail asking me for a copy of our “catalog” which for now is merely a print-out of the products page on our web site – now there’s a slow through-put on a page request. Point being: The old media are several orders of magnitude behind the curve, and free-falling.
October 20th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
#9, are you seriously suggesting that the KNS is trying to hide news by posting it on the Internet, where it is available forever to anybody who wants to look for it?
Not suggesting, saying. Time after time there is content ONLY available on KNS blogs that is not in the dead tree version. When you present news that is available to only a small percentage of the KNS readership that is a cowardly act. Those of us that use the Internet are not affected. We are also in the vast minority. Even readers like myself that only read the KNS online may not read the KNS blogs every day.
But I do appreciate and enjoy any defense of the KNS as a real newspaper. Please proceed Rich. Perhaps you can explain how the KNS never reported anything on Mayor Ragsdale and the Tyler Harber issue until County Commission started to look at.