Tom Shortell, a Morning Call reporter, covered both Lehigh and Northampton County. He was also the paper's "Road Warrior." Today is his last day. Here's what he has to say on his way out the door.
"[N]ewspapers are in dire shape. Years of buyouts and layoffs have pushed out most senior reporters and editors. That leaves more work for less experienced staff to handle, and communities and beats get abandoned. I will be the 10th full-time reporter or editor to leave the Morning Call since the end of June. Only one of those positions has been filled so far.
Neither do the reporters who are still there.
He's leaving journalism to start a second career. I wish him the best.
22 comments:
Tom is a great reporter and will be missed. But the MC and parent Corp Tribune brought this on themselves by alienating conservative subscribers over the years with their biased national news coverage and editorials. After being a full 7 days a week subscriber for over 30 years, I had read enough anti-Trump and anti-Republican coverage and cancelled earlier this year. I miss the local news, sports and some features, but those sections have been thinned out with the reporting staff dismissals Tom refers to. I have saved over $800 a year and do not regret my decision. Th MC is losing lots of subscribers and ad revenue. A pity, but they have lost all credibility.
The media has not done a good job in years They are bad for the country the way they have been reporting
In all due respect to Mr. Shortell, they didn't "dig deeper", even when they had a much fuller staff. One departed reporter after another claims that they were free to write where the story took them, yet the paper, decade after decade, truly served the local establishment.
I wish the paper was financially independent and still fully staffed, but they never were journalistically near the cutting edge.
It really is bad for local government. The mayors and county executives have no watchdogs. The legislatures have to conduct business in public. The executives do it behind closed doors.. They can have all the meetings they want, makes plans control their message and the information that gets out.
Without newspapers checking into leads and snoopping around there is no accountability.
Media is bad news people do not trust the media anymore--for good reason--they elected Biden who is destroying our country Media never again will be trusted and that includes you
For years the Call ignored small borough and township government meetings. Many of these same communities did not have live meeting broadcasting equipment, so if the public was unable to personally attend these meetings, little knowledge of how their taxpayers dollars were spent
or personal liberties lost was known until too late.
We only have ourselves to blame. Despite the myriad resources, we are a far less educated society than in the past. People are lazy and rely on sound bites and headlines for news, rather than actually reading articles, listening to news, and digesting what is reported. Citizens don’t care, which is why the extreme left/right is controlling moderate America. When people finally wake up, it may be too late.
Tom Shortell was a fair, honest and excellent reporter. These losses are disheartening to say the least. Good luck to him.
One of my favorites. The last of a dying breed. Good luck.
8:48 - Spot on!
It all goes back to the deregulation of the industry back in the early 80's allowing large conglomerate corporations to buy up, TV, Radio and Newspapers which basically killed independent ideas, thoughts and worse, actual competition. There used to be laws preventing cross ownership and limits on market share within MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas).
Corporate demand for profits led to repeated consolidation and cost cutting which led to broader syndicated "sharing" among the various media entities under each corporate umbrella. And since Chicago didn't give two shits about local politics in Phoenix or Boston and vice versa, the easy focus rested on "National Level" politics. Radio then really leaned into it and took up cheap national programing which is how/where/when "Conservative Talk Radio" started taking off with Rush Limbaugh and others.
Yet another display of Lawyers, Lobbyists & Wall Street getting their way, and the masses being completely distracted by "Culture War" wedge issues and every other partisan pile of shit they shovel onto society.
Abortion, "My Gunz!", Welfare, Climate Change, Immigration, Sexuality/Gender issues are all just distractions (not saying unimportant) while the rich get richer and the rest of the country engages in stupid slap fighting over issues that have VERY LITTLE impact on our day to day lives.
Our only news for some time has been the "If it bleeds it leads" click bait. Unfortunately, we are consumers and are to blame with the choices we make. Don't like factory farms, yet we want our bacon, chicken and beef to be cheap and consistent. Don't like big box stores or warehouses? we vote with our wallet by going online or to Wal-Mart for cheap shit. Bemoaning the fact that nothing is made here anymore? keep voting for China by buying cheap shit.
News is the same way. Most people don't want the news they want to be entertained. So what are we fed? MSNBC, Fox News, "reality" shows.
Time to change our diets.
Our ‘better’ are setting-up ONE PARTY GOVERNMENT. That’s never good for ‘we the people.’ This is precisely why I am hoping to see a meaningful rejection of all incumbent politicians. Party registration no longer matters. They are mostly all of the same mind. The next few elections must send a message. But, it could be too late. Yes, the news media, including the Morning Call, deserves some of the blame.
News in our society is and has always been a consumer product. Why do you think newspapers fought against dropping printed public notice posting requirements - long after the dawn of the Internet? The M Call published fluff pieces for ANIZDA cronies while accepting their advertising dollars. Consumer tastes change and consumers become weary of unreliable products. We certainly are responsible for this. We are not to blame, however.
Honestly, i dont care. Mcall lost me when they decided to be Palowski's cheerleader and mouth piece instead of looking into the corruption that was leaking out to other sources (blogs for instance)
Even now, most of the stories on the NIZ are nothing but PR releases for stratus apartments or whatever restaurant that will close in 8 months there.
Happy Trails to you Tom Shortell...... my BEST to you and your family! I remember when you and and the other young reporter started.... we had code names for you (the Kid" and your partner "sewer rat".. anyway take care..from "deep Throat"
"Anonymous Ron Karasek said...
Tom Shortell was a fair, honest and excellent reporter. These losses are disheartening to say the least. Good luck to him."
It is too bad that Mr. Shortell was not a beat reporter in the Slate Belt. Somehow Wind Gap assumed ownership of a bridge with a 30 ton weight limit, and will now be responsible for upgrading it to accommodate heavy truck traffic. Tom could have covered this, as well as the fact a developer was allowed to rewrite the UMBT ordinance. Not enough eyes of the public on what was happening.
Best of life to you. I remember the days of Dan Hartwell. The county would work hard on how to "spin" the story to Dan and everyone so the full facts never came out. But at least then worried about Dan which may have made them a little more honest. Politics is always about the spin to the media. We see today they don't need to as the media is in their pockets no matter what the spin. We need media but we need reporting of news not commentary. As they say. Just the facts
Shortell was just as biased as the other reporters at the Call. He hid it better, but it often came out in what he wrote, or what he chose not to write.
While he laments the buyouts and layoffs, he lacks the introspection to see what caused the buyouts and layoffs. As others have noted, one-sided reporting (and editing) as well as protection of the (usually democratic) establishment is what's ultimately responsible for the Call's decline in subscription and advertising dollars.
The Call's turning a blind eye for a decade on what was going on in Allentown City Hall was the most glaring example of the Call's failure, as if the problems in Allentown were a one-time event that lead to the FBI raid in 2015. It wasn't a secret that Pawlowski was shaking down city vendors for contributions as early as 2007, with the help of then purchasing agent Mary Ellen Koval. That alone was newsworthy and should have been exposed. Koval would later run for City Controller and win after being funded almost exclusively by Pawlowski, an obvious conflict of interest that the Call once again had little interest in covering.
Keep in mind, this wasn't happening in some far off region of the Call's coverage area. This was when they were still located one block from Allentown City Hall. If anyone laments the Call not covering a story in their Township or Borough, rest assured they would have likely ignored it or outright covered it up anyway.
While I don't disagree that Shortell is a nice person, even though he was late to the scene at the Call he was no different than any of the others. The paper's demise is on them. All of them.
There hasn't been a real good fiscal accountant watching allentowns shenanigans since the passing of mine and your friend Lou Hershman. He made calls that were never addressed before his passing because of covid and it has been almost two years and they still haven't been addressed because I watch the videos of counsel.
When it comes to general news I sometimes find a number of interesting stories on the WFMZ website. Just today there is a story about Bethlehem City finances and no mention of it in the papers. The only thing the Express Times is good for is lining the cats litterbox, especially if Donald Trump is on the front page.
You literally can read nearly an entire newspaper without reading editorials. It is one page of the paper.
Wish you good luck on getting Fox or OANN to cover a local issue other than people screaming about masks.
this is how democracy ends. Rox/OAN/Facebook spew that lies that fit their audiences prejudices. it's an IQ test that half the country is failing.
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