Occasional media critic Tom Roe of WGXC checks out two new local newspapers -- the brand-new Greenville Mountain News Pioneer and the fresh-from-a-makeover Greene County News -- and helpfully shreds them for us here in Internet-land. (Neither paper has a website.) He's not too impressed:
Both have little news — the Pioneer reveals a new Greenville bakery, while the News covers NY State Senator James Seward‘s appearance at the opening of Coxsackie beverage distributor Empire Merchants North. The Pioneer has a much cleaner layout, though the News improves from its Courier days, and now looks more like its HCNC sister papers The Daily Mail and Register-Star. Both publications include lots of unnecessary filler with the News even printing a verbatim press release from WGXC about a radio station event with the Agroforestry Center twice, on pages 20 and 23 (extra thanks!).
Here's hoping they at least marked it as being the work of WGXC; the practice of passing off press releases as though they were genuine staff-written articles is all too common in little community papers.
Issues aside, these are dark days for newspapers both large and small, as the appallingly depressing comments on a WGXC item on the abrupt demise of the Greenville Press demonstrate all too well. To the Pioneer and the News, if they read the Internet at all: Best of luck.
