Well, duh! They missed the story then, and they’re trying to catch up.

Yeah, the newspaper sale, is rather amazing. The Statsman, of course, once upon a time was owned by a real, live person. Then it was sold to Federated Newspapers (a little two-bit, Mickey Mouse outfit); then to Gannett (a big, multibilliondollar Mickey Mouse outfit), then to KR, a … well, it didn’t stick around long enough for us to find out what it’s like. And now the big M. I dunno anything about that outfit, but I’ll bet it suffers from the same problems as Gannett — money hungry, “send us money and we’ll let you run the newspaper with whatever money you have left.”

Full disclosure: I’m a now-retired-and-free-to-vent ex-longtime Statesman employee, under both Federated and Gannett. And the biggest problem I saw through all those years was that there are so many layers of bosses, it’s hard to get anything major done.

If I wanted to do something that would require a sizeable financial outlay, for example, I was supposed to talk to the assistant managing editor, who would talk to the managing editor, who would talk to the executive editor, who would talk to the publisher, who, if he thought the idea was worthwhile, would submit it to somebody at Gannett, who would run it up through a bunch more layers.

And then, if it finally got approved, someday the word would work its way back down, but then either I wouldn’t remember whatthehell I wanted the money for in the first place, or I would have already given up the buggy after the horse died and bought a car anyway, or given up the chisel we used to cut the words into the stone and bought a pencil and then a pen and then a typewriter …

Ah, to have a real, live publisher who really was the person who owned and published the paper rather than someone who got the title “publisher’ because he or she …. um, er, uh … well, did something that got somebody to give him or her the title (we never did find out how any of the got it).

Still, some call it “progress’ …

ED NOTE– Gordon, THIS editor took about a minute to get you published just like you wrote it.

I understand ghetto kids can come up with more uses for newspapers than suburban kids.

But I understand there was a time when people used them to keep informed on what was happening in the world. Actually, I find radio (BBC!) is the best way for me to keep up. The web has been a major disapointment as a news channel. Most of the news sites are the same news organizations, using a different medium. When you try and find some alternative reporting (not opinion) on news stories, you find the same story, exact same words repeated on countless newspaper and television station websites. You have to do a lot of clicking around to get into any depth in a story on the web.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1730382,00.html

However, we still need reporters who work 40+ hours a week digging into stories. The blogosphere can’t replace that, though they’re good at watchdogging media.

ED NOTE–GUARDIAN agrees big time.

I have my Google home page setup so that it always displays my favorite national news sites with the current top stories, the Boise Guardian with its most recent postings and the weather in all the locations I am interested in.

We’re not totally there yet, I still have to go to the Statesman and broadcast media to get the complete picture on much of the local news, but that too is quickly changing…

I think that Blog sites like the Boise Guardian will become more a part of our future local news sources where we not only get the news, but can interact with it as well.

As a former Statesman employee (carrier*), for as long as I can remember, the liberals have complained that the Statesman was pandering to the conservatives, and the conservatives have complained that it’s a liberal rag. (So they must be doing SOMETHING right, huh?)

Who knows? Maybe the daily printed newspaper is destined go the way of the public library, due in significant part to the “Information Superhighway.” (God bless you, Algore!)

* – Steve the newspaper carrier… I started after school, when the Statesman had a weekday AFTERNOON edition. Graduated to mornings. (At the time, it was 35 cents a week, or 45 cents if you wanted the Sunday paper.) I must be getting old – I love to wax nostalgic.