Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Monett murder coverage affected by decision to eliminate Monday edition

It did not take long for the Monett Times to suffer from its cost-cutting decision to eliminate its Monday newspaper.

When it came to coverage of Sunday's murder-suicide, the newspaper was light years behind its competitors- the television stations, the Joplin Globe, and the Springfield News-Leader.

Not only did the Times not have a newspaper until Tuesday afternoon, two days after the murder occurred, but it did not even take advantage of the immediacy of the internet to post information earlier. There are a lot of people who automatically went to the Monett Times website when they heard about the tragedy. No story was posted until Tuesday.

Even then, the Times failed to recover from the jump it gave to its competitors. There are always local angles, feature approaches that can be used in situations where other reporters have beaten you to the main story. From all appeaerances, Lisa Schlictman's story on the Times website provided no more information and no fresh angles.

If daily newspapers are going to eliminate their Monday editions, they need to take steps to make sure they remain the primary news source for their communities. So far, the Monett Times has not done so.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the real world, not "fantasy journalism." Getting rid of Mondays likely ensured people at the paper kept their jobs. Hence... the real world.

Randy said...

Real journalism might have kept something like this from happening.