The Chron & Hurricane Dennis
I have to give the Houston newspaper credit for not sending a reporter to cover Hurricane Dennis.
The Chronicle finally wised up.
For many years it was pretty much standard procedure to dispatch a reporter, and maybe a photographer, (or a whole pack of 'em) to whatever hurricane was about to hit the Gulf or Atlantic coasts.
Big waste of time and money.
Hurricanes are TV stories. How can the dry, day-old prose of a newspaper reporter (sprinkled liberally with AP wire copy to fill out the edges) compete with the immediacy and theatrics of a TV reporter, the cable TV news shouters and The Weather Channel? It can't.
So the Houston Chronicle decided to just let its wire services provide the coverage of Hurricane Dennis. Good for the company bottom line, and the readers, by and large, couldn't care less. I doubt any of them noticed.
Posts
2 comments:
They probably follow them around hoping for that, or maybe Dr. Neil Frank has a special arrangement.
How can they compete with TV? They don't. You send writers who know what the hell they are doing not just someone fresh out of college who wants to flail around in a hurricane and who is employed there because newspapers have become the temples of cheap.
It is hilarous watching some 45 years later all these upstart TV reporters who think if they blow in the wind they will become Dan Rather.
Post a Comment