{"id":310,"date":"2010-07-19T07:54:03","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T12:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/07\/19\/100719_newmrtsection\/"},"modified":"2022-03-18T07:38:35","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T12:38:35","slug":"100719_newmrtsection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/07\/19\/100719_newmrtsection\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Newspaper Listens, Improves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote about a few things<\/a> that I thought would improve life in Midland, Texas, including the elimination of the weekly “around Texas” section of the Midland Reporter Telegram. I’m under no illusion that my comment had anything to do with it, but I was pleased to open this morning’s paper and find a new section entitled Names and Faces: A roundup of community, society, and philanthropy in Midland<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In my admittedly uninformed opinion, this is the kind of content that a local newspaper needs to focus on in order to draw readers. We have lots of other options to get state, national, and international news, but almost no options for local coverage. Whether this exact format or specific content is sustainable remains to be seen, but I find it more interesting and informative than a section of columns and reports pulled from other newspapers* concerning topics that often have no direct local appeal.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that filling a section of local coverage each week represents a significant commitment of resources, and I appreciate the MRT’s willingness to commit those resources. I hope the experiment is successful.<\/p>\n

*Exception: This may seem illogical, but I do see value in the MRT’s reprinting of selected reports from other West Texas newspapers.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote about a few things that I thought would improve life in Midland, Texas, including the elimination of the weekly “around Texas” section of the Midland Reporter Telegram. I’m under no illusion that my comment had anything to do with it, but I was pleased to open this morning’s paper and find… Continue reading Local Newspaper Listens, Improves<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism-news-media","category-midland-odessa","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8997,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/8997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}