I have not been posting because I often find it impossible to log in; why this should be I do not know.

With world and national and even state news available 24/7 on a wide variety of media--NPR, CNN, the three original television networks and the internet, to name the most obvious--print newspapers cannot expect to survive by presenting the "big" news stories. Their hope is to be relentlessly local; and that is an idea that seems to come hard to their owners and managers. They need to be the place to go to read about the town council, the school board, the churches, the Little League, the Girl Scouts, and so on.
This should not be demeaning, although editors and publishers seem to think it is. Life is lived first of all in localities, whether the locality is Manhattan, St. Petersburg, Washington, DC, or Bethlehem, PA.
When the Globe-Times was in its fatal decline, its consultants did not think of this aspect of human life. The paper was advised to cut back on its local coverage, except for sports. The advice was followed; and this gave its readers one more reason for ending their subscriptions.
Now the Morning Call is making the very same mistake. It has cut off its 11 weekly shoppers, one for each of the communities it included in its cireculation area. This is where you would see news of your town's businesses, of your grandson's Little League no-hitter--in short, the news that most directly touched your life. The paper has cut its distinguished historical columnist, cut back on its society coverage, and no doubt--I have not yet had time to check this--on its local arts coverage.
Question: Who, then, is left to serve, if not the people who want to know what is happening around them?
The paper has done all this, too, in what has become the American corporate tradition. Some 102 employees and contributors have been let go just before the major holidays of the year. (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, Winter Solstice? I refuse to go there, although I myself celebrate Christmas. All I can say to these exiles from the Morning Call is, "Happy Holidays, guys.Whatever you celebrate. Lots of luck.")

Professor Walter Brasch is a distinguished professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA. Brasch wrote a not-QUITE published book about the demise of the Globe-Times of Bethlehem. In "Death of a Newspaper," he postulates that one of the things the Bethlehem paper might have done to save itself would have been to "make itself small," and concentrate on holding its natural circulation base--Bethlehem. Instead, on the advice of consultants, the paper attempted to expand its markets. Its logo was seen everywhere, for miles around. Unfortunately, it may as well have been painted on water.
So. The Globe-Times was small; and, arguably, one of the reasons for its demise was that it tried to be big. (I am not saying that this summarizes all of Professor Brasch's argument; and I hope his book may someday be generally available.)
The Morning Call would appear to have stumbled into the ditch opposite the one that swallowed its late competitor. The Allentown paper put its trust in bigness. It is part of a giant corporation, the Chicago Tribune, and has been a corporate holding of one corporation or another since it was sold years ago by its founding Lehigh Valley family, the Millers.
The problem is that the Allentown paper has always been just a small cog in the machine of whatever corporation it belongs to. It is, after all, in the mix with papers from Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other big cities. It stands to reason that, as a small cog, it will be among the first to be cut to the bone. Being a small piece of something larger is no defense, either; especially if the parent organization is in trouble. And, like all newspaper organizations, the corporate owner of the Morning Call, the Chicago Tribune, is in trouble, saddled with revenue losses from declining advertising and readership.
MoveOn.com fails to see that the Allentown paper's troubles must be viewed in a wider context, a nationwide one. Also, that the problems of newspapers can hardly be solved by the signing of petitions.
What CAN solve the problem of print newspapers? Stay tuned...

It will take some time, maybe a few years; but I think we are witnessing the incremental death of the Allentown Morning Call. For those of us who lived through, and who more or less personally endured, the death of an earlier newspaper--the Globe-Times of Bethlehem--this is not an especially happy time. The death of a community's newspaper pinches and shrivels the community itself, and the life in it.
Not that the Morning Call ever was Bethlehem's newspaper. Some of--not all of--the reporters it sent over to the Bethlehem bureau during the past few years have been so arrogant, and so determined to push their favorite city politicians--think Mayors Cunningham and Callahan--that they could not bother with straight news coverage. You could read the Morning Call; but to know what had gone on at a meeting you had either to have been there or to have had a friend there. And this is a serious criticism of a newspaper. It got at least one reporter fired; but things should never have been allowed to come to that.
Some of the mistakes that are now eating at the fabric of the Morning Call are similar to the mistakes that consumed the Globe-Times; some, I think, are different.
I intend to continue this discussion in the next blog entry.

U.S. Representative Charles Dent seems a thoroughly nice, decent man who is perhaps out of his element in the acid bath that is the U.S. House of Representatives these days. It is natural and understandable that the freshman Congressman should wish to fit in with his associates, even though many of those associates are not, to say the least, people many of us would wish to invite home to dinner. Still, they ARE the people with whom he must spend much of his work time. But
Mr. Dent should be more concerned with meeting the needs of his constituents than with toeing the mark of a party leadership for which the term "barbarous" does not seem too strong.
The people of the 15th tend to be older, retired, less healthy, less wealthy than some. They have paid their dues, and would like a little well-earned security in their old age. They would like their kids and grandkids to take a step up--college, maybe, and better financial prospects than they themselves have had.
In voting for what has so well been called the "reverse Robin Hood" budget recently passed by the House, the Congressman lost track of all those hopes and aspirations, and forgot whose sweat really pays his salary. He came across as somebody who WANTS to sentence those who voted for him to lives of want and desperation. More likely, he is just new enough to be uncertain in his actions.
As I write this, there still is time for him to regain his balance and redeem himself--at least in part--by voting against further tax cuts for the wealthy. Let us hope he does that, at least. Speaking as one of his constituents, it seems to me we can get past his rocky start if he can.