The Rag

I've joined my friend Becky up on the soapbox to express my disgust with our local rag, I mean newspaper, the Courier Journal.  It's also lovingly referred to as "The Curious Journal."  The paper has simply gone to hell.

Back in the day, the Courier shared equal billing with the Louisville Times.  The Courier and Times were owned by the Bingham family, Louisville's version of the Kennedys or Rockefellers. The Courier was published in the morning and the Times was published in the evening.  They were pretty the same except local photographs and stories were a bit different, and both had entirely different comics.  Whenever I would go to a concert, I would walk down to the neighborhood store the next morning to buy a copy of the Courier so I could cut out the photographs and review from the concert for my scrapbook.  Then I would be on pins and needles waiting to see the evening Times to see what other pictures they printed from the concert. 

All of that changed when the Bingham family sold the papers to Gannett.  It's been downhill ever since.  Their first major change was dropping the Louisville Times and just having one major newspaper in Louisville.  Another major change came recently when the Courier went to color photographs, ads, and comics.  This change has come with a hefty price tag - customer service seems to be picking up the tab.  For the past two years, the paper has been late at least once or twice each month.  It's never been the carrier's fault; it's been due to one problem after another at the Courier.  Friday was the most recent problem, "About 60,000 Louisville-area subscribers received yesterday's Courier Journal late because of a printing problem."  If we had received it on time, chances are it would be folded off center like once section is almost every other day.

Yes, I'm fed up with the Courier, but it's the only newspaper in town.  The only reason my family still subscribes is so they can get the TV section, the coupons, the daily crossword puzzle, and to see if anyone they know was in the obituaries.  If they weren't afraid of crossing the digital divide and getting online, they could cut out the newspaper all together.  But that's not about to happen, so I guess we'll just have to buck up and make the best of it.  At the end of the day, at least we have something to toss in the fireplace to mix with the kindling.