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Nazareth, Pa., United States

Monday, June 01, 2009

Blogs Beneath Morning Call Columnist Paul Carpenter

His paper is going down the toilet, yet Morning Call columnist Paul Carpenter is "loath to look at, or even think about, blogs." I guess he prefers all those stories about fried pizza dough and the secret recipe to Hess' Strawberry Pie. Yeah, that's the ticket. Keep rearranging those deck chairs.

I read Carpenter's comment because another blogger, Michael Molovinsky, mentioned the column. Fortunately, most real journalists have a more tolerant attitude.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the Call had any sense, they'd make a deal with you and reprint your posts in their paper. Your blog is usually more timely, more interesting, and more relevant to the average reader. The gulf between the number of comments your blog gets and the comments www.mcall.com gets is ironic. Not that an article in 2009 about the WPA of 80 years ago doesn't have its place, there is a lot going on today that needs attention. In the 1930s I guess the Call must have been publishing commentaries opining on things that happened in the 1850s.

michael molovinsky said...

bernie, although i understand your sensitivity to carpenter's statement, perhaps he had in mind the fringe and hate blogs when typing those words. i actually omitted two comments noting the newspaper column because i didn't want to tip off the "haters".

anon 1:19. if they had even more sense they would skip over o'hare and use my blog. the point of the article was that an irreplaceable, custom built icons were being ignored while the city concentrates on purchasing and building current items out of catalog.

Anonymous said...

While the Valley becomes more dynamic more populated (still the only part of the state that is growing), more interesting and more complicated, the Call is left behind. That's because neither a good paper nor a bad paper, it celebrates mediocrity. It's the Mediocre Call not the Mourning Call.

Anonymous said...

It is bad enough the papers actually read this blog, much less print it. Some of them actually think this fountain of falsehoods has merit.

No one will ever sue O'Hare, all you would get are his debts and naked pictures of Stoffa and Angle.

The paper could be sued and based on the horseshit O'Hare writes, probably within a month.

michael molovinsky said...

for many years i have been addicted to newsprint, caffeine and nicotine in the morning, although i stopped the nicotine, i cling to the other two. for a man like carpenter, who earned his living from the ink, i can understand if he has some resentment toward the electronic media which has decimated his industry.

Anonymous said...

Except for major metropolitan areas, the 2 newspaper town is quickly disappearing. Seattle and Denver are examples. The Seattle Post Intelligencer shut down its print operations, but continues its online service. I heard an interview w/ one of its reporters over the weekend, who said (suprisingly) that he hasn't lost any clout in getting information from sources even though its an online service. In addition, he's able to break stories more quickly, and for national news stories, the SPI simply hyperlinks to a larger paper's website or Reuters / AP. He also indicated that he found city bloggers providing better coverage of neighborhood news events than the paper did (ex. zoning mtgs., etc.). A refreshing perspective.

I believe there are many on staff at the MCall who are having difficulty coming to grips with the fact that the "news" can be provided by much fewer people at a lower cost and oftentimes more effectively with greater detail. Understandable, I suppose. No need to lash out at bloggers who are on the cutting edge of the news business, however.

I always marveled at the contradiction that the vol. and value of news varies on a given day, yet the print newspapers always had the same format and number of pgs. for stories.

Anonymous said...

Bernie,

How much more news grabbing would your headline have been if you had written this>



"Blogs Bequeath Morning Call to Columnist Paul Carpenter."

Bernie O'Hare said...

"The paper could be sued and based on the horseshit O'Hare writes, probably within a month."The paper will be sued bc it links to me? Does that mean I can be sued for all my links to other blogs and the paper? You're out of your mind.

Bernie O'Hare said...

"bernie, although i understand your sensitivity to carpenter's statement, perhaps he had in mind the fringe and hate blogs when typing those words."I don't think he knows what he has in mind bc he probably has never bothered to actually make an effort to read blogs. After all, they are published by the unwashed masses.

Carpenter's view reflects an intolerance that just hurts his supposed profession.

Anonymous said...

the reason the MSM really don't fully embrass blog's like this is because, their nothing more than a uninal wall! Until they develop creditability they will be marginlized! and this is not a creditable source!

BO, ur a giant in ur own mind!

Bernie O'Hare said...

Based on your commanding knowledge of the English language, I'm not surprised by your comment. "Embrace" is "embrass." Blogs are "blog's." "Credibility" is "credibility."

Looks to me as though you don't spend much time reading anything. If you do, your comprehension skills are a little off.

Anonymous said...

Bernie,
Thought you were gonna start your own on-line newspaper! If not now with 100 reporters out-of-work, when?

Bernie O'Hare said...

I set up a blog for Northampton County called "Northampton County Spotlight." I asked for people who wanted to write. A few bit once or twice, but that's it.

Researching and writing on a daily basis takes quite a bit of time. I would expect no one who was used to being paid well to do something for no pay at all. I was hoping for some citizen interest in different communitites, but that has not happened. At least not yet.

Anonymous said...

"for many years i have been addicted to newsprint, caffeine and nicotine in the morning, although i stopped the nicotine, i cling to the other two."

Now that's just funny shit right there.

Anonymous said...

I can relate to you when it comes to trying to create an e-publication. It's hard enoughto do a monthly e-newsletter, www.lehighvalleyflavor.piczo.com, so I can only imagine the work it would take to do a full fledged e-newspaper...

- Alfonso Todd

Ivan Denisovich said...

The Morning Call, they still around?

Seriously, though, Carpenter is one of the highlights of the paper, even if he exhibits some occasional BDS. Nonetheless, when he walks away or is given the retirement mandate, I was hoping he would start blogging because he usually is worth reading.

OT - the Call's new format stinks. The paper looks like the E-T. and covers about as much (less?) useful information as the 4th St. Rag does.

Anonymous said...

Paul Carpenter hasn't been relevant since the days of the Shapp administration - which he reminds readers of ad nauseum.

I'm surprised he knows what blogs are.

Anonymous said...

Ewe ken garentee that if their iz a mispeld coment, its a LongDem, Burnie. And beeware becuz some ar uzing spellcheck, but spelcheck doznt catch homonyms like know and no and there and their and your and you're. They still reveel themselves with the homonyms.

Anonymous said...

Boonie, Carpenter has no respect for Blogs because low life hacks like yourself can have one.

Anonymous said...

The only reason I read Paul Carpenter's column is because you linked to it because Michael mentioned it. You just tripled his readership.

Anonymous said...

Bernie,
Two days and counting till the strawberry pie recipe revealed.