The Goat Pen

Pretty much and they were right. I found my way into the paper later on.

Mine too.

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:
Her senior year she'll head up some type of thing - a community clean up or something and I'll get some press on it in the local community newspaper.

Oh, god, you're the type of asshole who calls the paper and demands someone come out and do a story on their kid doing something that fucking nobody else cares about.

oh god, you're the kind of guy that makes a living off those assholes and complains about it.

you guys need to get one of these for your car.

I just used it to start my sons car and it worked perfectly - so I gave it to him and bought 2 more.

That's cool. I have seen them, just assumed they didn't work well.

eCat wrote:

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:
Her senior year she'll head up some type of thing - a community clean up or something and I'll get some press on it in the local community newspaper.

Oh, god, you're the type of asshole who calls the paper and demands someone come out and do a story on their kid doing something that fucking nobody else cares about.

oh god, you're the kind of guy that makes a living off those assholes and complains about it.

No, we don't make a living. We barely make it at all and it's not from the readers, but rather the advertisers, who pay the bills at a paper, or now, don't pay them. Because people are now too stupid and lazy to care about the news. I blame aTm.

I knew there would be a response along those lines...

the reason advertisers want to advertise is because people buy the paper to read about their kids making honor roll or whatever

The Wilson County Times ain't gonna be breaking the next Watergate scandal

Now go write a story about how the dollar general put in a new sprinkler system as a follow up to your series on which tomatoes grow best in the shade

(too mean?)

Wow, eCat is an asshole.

LOL

yea I guess I am

AlabamAlum wrote:Wow, eCat is an asshole.

LMAO!

Has eCat switched to DirectTV yet? He's got be amazed by those power to turn back time commercials.

I was gonna make some joke about competing against the Grit newspaper but if you thought the Stringbean reference was obscure

"Now go write a story about how the dollar general put in a new sprinkler system as a follow up to your series on which tomatoes grow best in the shade

(too mean?)"

Not even fractionally mean enough. The competition with Grit would've been a good start, though...

The point is that I can be an asshole to one reader, even two or three, and even if they cancel their subscription, it won't matter. But we're losing advertisers at a rate that we won't be in business much longer. Why? Because of big-box retailers who don't advertise, crowding out the locally owned stores. Because craigslist and the like has decimated classifieds. Because hardly any auto dealerships advertise now. Because our shitty town buttered its bread with tobacco money for decades and that's long since dried up and the idiots here haven't figured out a way to make the town prosper again and so, the local economy sucks balls.

Sure, if we had 20% readership (which this paper hasn't had in decades), we probably could command a better market share of advertising but there are no other papers in town, no radio or TV stations. We're basically competing against high school yearbooks and the like and still losing.

There's also the growing number of idiots who think Facebook delivers news so they don't read the local paper or any paper or even care about news.

fwiw, I've been loyally forking over my $3.50 a month for the local community paper for like 15 years now.

Its about 8 pages with Lowes, Meijers, Menards and Home Depot ads inserted in the middle

Front page is hard hitting community news - a new park, tearing down a building someone wanted to convert to a YMCA, Mayor got caught fucking a part time cop in his squad car in a parking lot (yes, that happened)
Page 2 is editorials and the "question" of the week which is usually some played out idea 3 weeks past interesting anyone - like next weeks will be "are you concerned about the Zika virus?" and the occasional resident profile (eagle scout, charity work, some guy wrote a book about a sawmill no one remembers or cares about)
Page 3 is local happenings like Flock of Seagulls giving a free concert at Miami Meadows park or the VFW all you can eat spaghetti dinner
Page 4 is arrests and a Kerry Dodge ad (my favorite part of the paper)." Hey, the neighbor kid got arrested for selling weed again!"

The second section is sports, school and "featured" columnists - First two pages are sports and honor roll
The last part is some old guy who has his weekly column about whatever random thing happens in his life. He calls himself the old fisherman , the article begins like "well the old fisherman had breakfast at Bob Evans on Tuesday and you'll never guess who I saw there. Tom Smith whose family lived here until 1974 and he worked one summer at the IGA as a grocery sacker.........
I swear, one time I was reading it and in the middle of the article he mentions his wife died that week. You'd think that would be his lead in but no. I can't remember what was more important - probably which tomatoes grow best in the shade

The last page is a guest columnist, usually some grade B politician promoting whatever horseshit they care about, and the competing Ford/Chevy ad to Kerry Dodge.

There might be a recipe for whatever seasonal thing is on sale at the local Kroger - like blackberry cobbler

That's been the formula to milk $42 a year from me since Bush was first elected.

I get ours too and don't know why. It takes about 5 minutes to read. The police reports were the best until they stopped printing names.

Man, that was as good a representation of small town life and its concomitant malaise and ennui as I've ever seen. The question of the week is a good idea. I'm sure there's no shortage of letters from the disgruntled who think somebody might care about their opinion, but having a question of the week would provide focus for their rancor. You better get on that, Stu...

Jungle Rat wrote:I get ours too and don't know why. It takes about 5 minutes to read. The police reports were the best until they stopped printing names.

Yeah, especially when the names were friends and relatives.

I can explain...