Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes is said to have pissed on people who insulted him, shit in the theatre, and masturbated in public. Those antisocial behaviors might be more properly ascribed to a bottom-feeding blogger like myself than someone who dances with the stars. But like Diogenes, White carried a lamp into the dark caverns of local government, looking for an honest man. More often than not, it was in vain.
Some of you, especially those among you who are Trump supporters, will trash White because he detested the guy or because he failed to take disgraced Allentown Mayor Edwin "Fed Ed" Pawlowski to task sooner than he did. This is unfair. The primary focus of White's opinion pieces were local, where he cast a jaundiced eye on both Republicans and Democrats. Although I think he should have been more critical of the corrupt Mayor than he was, he did actually check into one of my early stories about Fed Ed's non-tipping habit, as well as his refusal to even respond to the plight of mostly minority shop owners who were going out of business along Hamilton Street.
White's departure comes at a very bad time for local news. He is not the only person who was cashiered. While the emergence of Donald Trump has created a surge of interest in news, it's national news. People are glued to cable networks and national newspapers, but the situation is much different locally.
Just last month, Ken Doctor at NiemenLab painted this stark picture:
2018 may prove to be a turning point. The year has already been marked by an unforeseen acceleration of decline in the core local daily newspaper business, both in advertising and in circulation. At the same time, the hushed whispers of a local news emergency have grown louder. There’s talk — both public and private — of the need to raise huge amounts of money in order to address a crisis a decade in the marking.The Express Times, at one time my favorite local daily, is just a shadow of its former self. The Morning Call appears to be following that model. There might be five honest-to-goodness reporters left.
The result?
News deserts.
As Doctor explains, "The print product itself — in most, but not all, cities and towns — continues to shrink, a 'news' paper in name only. Too little news, too little understanding of the community, too distant from readers’ concerns of today. Newspapers in name only."
While we blame the newspapers for shrinking, the real problem is us. We've become so polarized that all we need to know about a person is his party. The inquiry ends there, even on a local level. Never mind what's actually happening. We think watching Fox, CNN or PBS will tell us everything.
As a result, we get the government we deserve, and it's pretty bad.
What's also very sad is the loss of community. I really look forward to reading about the different high schools as they play football, basketball and baseball. Some of you might enjoy reading about other sports or other extracurricular activities. It's a shot in the arm to these kids when they are recognized, especially by affable Keith Groller. He seems to know every kid. Although both dailies are doing their best to cover high school sports, it's getting harder for them. They are spread too thin.
While I have no regard for the corporate-owned news, the answer lies with us. If we demand local news coverage, we will eventually get it.
51 comments:
I am a full subscriber to the Morning Call and beginning to question my loyalty. Bill White and local columnists like him are the only reason to buy the paper. He will be missed.
To quote the late,great Jim Morrison..you cannot petition the lord..with prayer! Neither can we the people demand press coverage of political corruption and abuse of power. Idealism is dead and so is fair play. The press has abandoned us for advertising dollars and those heavy hitters say what gets covered and what gets ignored. To hell with the local press. We mourn your death.
Softball coverage will never be the same.
Who will be the major NIZ promoter in Bills absentee?
Who will pen the revisionist history of the Pawlowski years?
Perhaps that’s a project for the retirement years.
The King of White Bread “journalism” shuffles off the stage.
What a loss.
Who’s the de facto editor of that shell of a news organization now, or does it matter?
Bernie, although you call yourself a bottom feeding blogger,all too often your loyalty to your "friends" guides your pen. Bill White's repetitive themes, be it eating his way through music festivals or cake contests, took up half his columns. Add in grammar and other softballs, there was little appetite for local politics. I have no recollection of his acknowledgement of the displaced merchants. On the contrary, he and the paper were/are staunch supporters of the NIZ. With his and the departure of the other senior employees, it will certainly be the end of local institutional knowledge at the paper, but they didn't use it anyway....signed the "other" blog
Print media is destined for obsolescence, this is due to many factors, mostly younger people do not read, not the newspaper, not books, not magazines.
I believe people are reluctant to read articles more than a few paragraphs, too busy, too much in a hurry, It has affected us all.
Newspapers started declining years ago, they stopped actually reporting on things.
They are given press releases that they mostly copy. They seem to make a judgement on those they cover, then either cover for them or trash them. There is very little objectivity or actual long term thought.
While many want to blame Trump for the decline in the news. Trumps mere presence has exposed the media to be mostly a biased propaganda outlet for the either the political or corporate world, which is very connected and it is all about pushing an agenda. I don't believe it will ever recover.
If we had newspapers, we would be swearing in congressman Morganelli in a few weeks, not a misguided, non experienced zealot !
After the first of the year Bill will quietly assume responsibility for Riley’s PR.
The contract is already drawn up.
You read it here first.
White never got a news assignment that he couldn’t turn into a puff piece.
That was his genius.
Stopped reading his stuff 10 years ago. Bring back Paul Carpenter.
Wow, where do I start with this?
You mention that White believes that he tried to use his "power" as the newspaper's only opinion columnist to do good. If that's the case, he WASTED over half his opportunities each year on the fluff articles you mention. Do we really need annual articles on Christmas lights and food choices at local festivals? That's certainly NOT what I want to pay for as a Call subscriber.
As you note, White has chosen to vent about his hatred for Trump. That's great if it's something original, but I can get better-written Trump bashing from a multitude of sources, or even in the national "news" section of the Call.
In Allentown, while White could have used his power to cast his "glaring spotlight" on the largest municipal corruption scandal in the region's history. Instead we got the article Bernie mentions on Pawlowski's tipping habits. Now that Pawlowski has left, instead of insightful commentary on how one-party rule really hasn't served the City well, or how Pawlowski's corruption cost Allentown taxpayers dearly, we recently got an article on how raising taxes is sometimes the right thing to do.
That's not journalism, that's not good commentary, that's a dereliction of duty.
I think White was a lazy journalist. He's attacked the easy targets, but largely ignored writing about the real issues or problems until the damage was done.
The "news desert" analogy is a good one. But any desert has been created by the paper itself and columnists like White. While the Call's readers are the ones crawling across the desert floor in the scorching sun, we've looked at the distorted horizon to see White driving the Morning Call delivery truck full of water to save us. But instead of water, White and the paper have delivered only sand.
The only nice thing I can say is at least he was better than Carpenter. But then that's not much of a compliment.
It's remarkable that all "news" passes through so few conduits on its way to us. That number is shrinking each day, at least in traditional media. The new media is an unwieldy place. Let the buyer beware. Although, lots of naive people bought Water Cronkite's nonsense for decades and though him the father of impartial news brokering, which he wasn't, of course. It's a shame to see print outlets devolve into clickbait websites. But they were going that way with hotdog, food, and dancing contest coverage - while ignoring local government meetings. Perhaps they are just serving the desires of the public and the public has little desire for local news.
Barf. What a bunch of baloney.
Bernie, I have to compliment you on your dedication to covering local news, while you sometimes lose you objectivity at least you are doing the work and people can make up their own mind. You may be more objective than the morning call. Newspapers are unlikely to survive much longer. There is already talk of their need to be subsidized by the government. Maybe that is why all media seems to be in favor of big government. They hope the government will ensure they don't disappear.
Easy to blame Trump/millennials/cable TV/whatever-other reasons for the decline of local newspapers; harder to call it for what it is - lousy business practices. Morning Call delivery people who sit in front of your house at 4AM in the morning playing their car radios, eating Tastycakes, drinking sodas, and throwing their trash out the window. Easton Express-Times third party contractors tossing unsolicited Mainstreet Marketplace tabloids in your landscaping, in the street, in the gutters, etc. (we used to call that littering). “Decisions” to drop coverage of local government and sports because the corporate headquarters were sitting miles and miles away in northern NJ. Absurd advertising rates; $300-600 charges for obituaries; unwanted “special” editions you had to pay for; “800” contact numbers where you are placed on hold indefinitely. The list goes on and on. That’s why I dropped both papers years ago. You reap what you sow.
Print news didn't dry up on Friday, or last month, or last year. Pawlowski's rein of corruption ran for over a decade and The Morning Call, far better staffed then, than now, served only to cheer lead for it. They weren't doing the job when they had people.
Bernie this is Rich Grucela.......Bill White was instrumental in helping us build a long delayed memorial to the Lehigh Cement Co blast victims of 1942. He was also a fair critic of my political career. He will be missed.
MM, You complain that half of White's columns were filled with repetitive items, and I made that point. But as White once told me, many of his readers liked those stories than they did his political pieces. As for local government, he was the only opinion writer left willing to speak out about local matters. For example, he recently took three local incumbent state reps - Hahn, Emrick and Mako - to task for refusing to debate their opponents. He covered NorCo government antics, even sitting in on budget hearings. Today's reporters are too important to do that. I disagreed with Bill at times, especially when he was critical of Ron Angle or Don Cunningham, but I found myself in agreement with him more often than not. And even when I disagreed, there is only one instance in which I thought he was unfair, and that was only very recently.
You claim that I am guided by loyalty to my friends. Of course I am. I know few people who aren't. And unlike you, I consider loyalty an important quality. But it's a mistake for you to suggest or imply that I would mask the truth out of loyalty. It is also a mistake to say that Bill and I are friends. I liked him, but I cannot recall one situation in which he and I sat down for lunch or a cup of coffee. I never socialized with him. I do not golf, as he does, and do not enjoy many of his interests. Also, that bastard inducted me into his Hall of Shame, which is hardly an honor.
I suspect that, although you like to portray yourself as the only font of truth left in the LV, you may in fact be more driven than even I am by personal prejudices. In your case, you have an animus towards White bc he called you dour and misguided. You often are. He resent him because he supported the demolition of Wehr's dam and thought the NIZ was a useful tool to revitalize Allentown. So really, you have allowed your disagreement with White on two local issues and personal animus to color your own perceptions.
While you criticize White for being repetitive, you fill your own blog with wistful nostalgia about the great 1950s, when there were few trouble some minorities. You often re-run posts written years ago because you are often too lazy to write something original. You are in no position to call White repetitive. Some of your own stories are incredibly misguided. In many cases, there is subtle racism in things you say, like in your recent story about A'town's former police chief. This is followed by overt racism in the comments that you fail to correct or delete.
You call yourself the "other" blog. There is also LVCI and Bethlehem Gadfly.
Bill is a good writer who, unlike you, is able to laugh at himself and his own shortcomings. He poked fun at those who tend to take themselves a bit too seriously. He was really the only voice that talked about local government aside from the blogs, and he had far more readers than you or I. Sure, i would like tisee 100% of his stories devoted to local government, but as a writer, I know that you have to write about what is on your mind. Why he thought Dancing with the Stars or Mark Trail was so damn important is beyond me, but I appreciated his local columns and never really minded his other stuff.
Remember the recurring articles White wrote about the NIZ, where he pointed out that allowing one or two property owners to benefit from the special tax zone was a disservice to taxpayers and the city? And how he courageously called for the legislation to be changed so that property owners couldn't poach tenants from surrounding municipalities in the state? Or how he showed that the NIZ boundaries were wrongly gerrymandered to the benefit of the politically-connected few (including the Morning Call)?
I don't remember those columns either, since he never wrote those. Nor did anyone else at the Call.
Thanks Bill, for doing your best to keep me and others woefully uninformed about the real issues in the community that you supposedly served. At least we know where we can get the best food at the Fair, if we can afford admission after the latest tax hike.
"Bernie, I have to compliment you on your dedication to covering local news, while you sometimes lose you objectivity at least you are doing the work and people can make up their own mind. You may be more objective than the morning call"
Ray, I am a blogger and full of opinion. I make no claim to objectivity. I do try to be honest and fair. I should have added your own blog in my response to MM. I was disturbed by your Musikfest piece and should have covered it.
8:09, Hope some of the corps. take notice to your criticism. We are expressing ourselves by refusing to buy newspapers that provide no coverage of local news and sports. But there are a few reporters left who are trying hard.
Bernie O'Hare said:
"I was disturbed by your Musikfest piece and should have covered it."
What was the article and where can we find it?
Bernie O'Hare said:
"For example, he recently took three local incumbent state reps - Hahn, Emrick and Mako - to task..."
You are correct - he did. Not surprisingly, I believe all three are Republicans. While White may have taken on the occasional token democrat, he saved most of his ire for republican elected officials. He certainly treated Pawlowski with kid gloves, if even that.
White also claimed to be a registered republican.
I don't know if he was just being harder on his own party, or if he was actually a democrat hiding behind a phony party registration. Either way the bias was there and noticeable. That may have won him favor among his peers, but that obvious bias also helped drive away many potential readers. The bias in his own articles was made even more ironic because of his frequent railings against partisanship in state and local politics. I guess he couldn't see the bias and partisanship that he was creating on his own computer screen, or didn't really care.
I'd like to think that the Call would recognize this problem and seek out some balance, but the slant is the same no matter how many faces change. Eliminate half your potential audience at the start, and it's not rocket science to figure out why they remain in trouble.
White was also highly critical of Democrat Glenn Reibman, Democrat Lamont McClure, Democrat John Stoffa, Democrat Steve Barron, Democrat Wayne Grube. You are allowing your own partisanship to get in the way.
Not really.
As I said, he occasionally was critical of democrats.
But not near as often as Republicans, and not with the same intensity.
The deregulation of the media industry, specifically the relaxing of rules for cross media (TV/Cable, Radio, Newpapers/Magazines) ownership around the country and even specific media markets is where this all started.
Granted it made stockholders a lot of money to allow for consolidation and elimination of redundant roles and responsibilities, but it ultimately killed competition, jobs and most importantly independent voices. Agendas and messaging is much more easily controlled and disseminated now as political parties and organizations with $ have only a limited # of media channels to pursue in order to reach significant %'s of the American population with just one "buy".
That's not what you said at all. You said an occasional token Democrat. He was critical of every single Dem in power in NorCo. There was nothing about it that was occasional or token. These were serious criticisms. As I said before, you are allowing your partisanship to get in the way. As he himself observed in a criticism of Senator Bob Menendez, tribalism trumps ethics or just plain basic honesty.
@10:54 Hahn, Emrick and Mako are do nothing state reps that no matter what letter is next to their name, deserve negative attention.
"What was the article and where can we find it?"
He may have deleted his blog. unable to find it.
good post Bernie. you provide more insight than a month's worth of "69 "news" which thinks that reporting what Trump tweets, even though 6,800 of them have been proven to be false, is "news." I enjoyed Bill White and his column, a decent person who often made me laugh.
9:56, You seem to think that an opinion writer has an obligation to inform you. He does not. It is his job to offer commentary. Bill White did. Your criticism is based on his failure to condemn the NIZ. In other words, you did not like his opinions. Too bad. He has no obligation to see things the way you do.
MM claims he is “chomping at the bit” to address White’s departure and had a tentative title - “Bill White Walks the Plank.” Not much schadenfreude there. A mean-spirited remark expressing glee over White’s sudden departure.
Bernie, although my criticism of Bill White was mild compared to the other comments here, you target mine because they are mine, and not anonymous, as are most of the others.
your comment of 12:00PM quotes directly from my comment on my blog, but you do not list my blog on your blog list? another blogger, who you do list and mention, previous to removing the link to my blog, you refused to link to him because he is anonymous and cuts and pastes much material.
even your blog list is driven by who you like or dislike.
Bernie O'Hare said...
9:56, You seem to think that an opinion writer has an obligation to inform you. He does not. It is his job to offer commentary. Bill White did. Your criticism is based on his failure to condemn the NIZ. In other words, you did not like his opinions. Too bad. He has no obligation to see things the way you do.
In your post, you noted that White "tried to use his power...to do good" and "cast a glaring spotlight on local government and leaders". That's great if you feel he was successful over in Northampton County, but here in Allentown he was a joke. He outright missed or ignored two of the biggest stories (Pawlowski corruption and NIZ abuse) that were occurring right under his nose.
So the "spotlight" seems a little bit dim over this way.
If you're now saying that as an opinion writer he has no obligation to inform his readers, then we can agree. Mission accomplished, Bill.
MM, the reason the link to your blog was removed is bc you are a purveyor of hate, as your recent blog about Allentown’s former police chief proves. The topic here is Bill White, not you. And though your narcissism prevents you from seeing it, I have answered several other comments aside from you.
The moronic gag and it's edited out news releases are over rated. Many of the articles are edited out because of complicit characters in and out of that supposed news organization.
That being said how come in the police articles there is never a mention of all the gunshots ringing out throughout the city?
Barf. More baloney. Really rancid, it shall be noted for the historical record.
I would hope he would do a local government news blog with his opinions clearly stated. Your blog is a very biased blog and your claim to want to get things right is dubious at best. You will ignore anything that you do not want the public to read. When it is brought up you either get rid of it or demean the people bringing it up.
Everyone has prejudices' and opinions' but you are extreme in yours. As others have made clear you love some people and you hate some people. You will always color your "reporting" accordingly.
The biggest winner in Bill White's retirement besides the readers would be whoever is responsible for cleaning the commodes he frequents, can you imagine the type of bowel movements that would result from his disgusting binge eating episodes?
6:03, then why on earth would you read me?
Maybe Donald Trump can clean the commodes. He will be doing a lot of that after he reports to prison.
MM calling someone else repetitive is like David Duke calling someone else a racist.
Molovinsky on Allentown is a great blog to read if you are a brown or black resident of Allentown who needs a clueless old white guy to tell you how you have ruined his former city.
It's also a good blog to visit if all the brown and black people on TV and in your community make you uncomfortable, and you need a safe space to complain about them. If Molovinsky's racism is too subtle, fear not! There is also the Molovinsky Tabernacle Choir's Amen chorus of overt racists.
Bonus: Frequent posts celebrating Israel, homeland of a persecuted minority. Oh the irony!
The focus of this post is Bill White's departure, not MM.
MM,I have already told you the focus of this post is Bill White, not you. I would be happy to publish a separate thread just about you where you can comment to your hearty's content, but I have no desire to bore my readers with your attempts to justify your racism.
Bob Ryan of KDDI has taken his case against SAM MURRAY to MM's blog!
LOL!!
"
Blogger michael molovinsky said...
mikek, i have no familiarity with the judge or the situation which you are apparently upset about. i would be willing to look at a complaint, but not be victimized by trolling."
MM and Ryan are kindred souls. Ryan will fit right in with ROLF Oeler.
Tell it to the Secret Service, Bernie.
Happy Rard Hustle, um, er, ah, Holidays!
:-)
Rolfie Boy Oilers probably drunk from his morning lagers maybe him and the synaptic slob who lives in a ramshackle crackerjack box of a house can celebrate Bill Whites departure by drinking themselves into a stupor.
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