Or, Why Do We Go Through This Every Year?
[This Commentary originally appeared in the January 3, 1991 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]
Just as certainly as Jack Frost nips at your nose, the end of the year brings forth a cavalcade of year-end summaries. These reviews highlight all the top news stories we have, for the most part, so fleetingly forgotten over the course of the past 12 months.
I refuse to retrace the recent year. If you want a year-end review, I suggest you read one of the major newsweeklies or tune into your favorite TV news show. I will, however, offer you Continue Reading “The Year in Review”
What a Difference 27 Years Make
We’ve seen pressure on all traditional media – print and television – for some time now. However, we might want to look at the recent history of radio as a harbinger for what to expect in these other media markets. I began working in the radio industry as an AM disc jockey in the late 1970s, just as, given its superior audio quality, FM was becoming the “go to” frequency band for music fans. Radio personalities had to find a way to attract and keep listeners. While still playing music, we began relying more on talk – mostly of the (innocent) humorous kind. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to Howard Stern and then to Rush Limbaugh.
Print media has been suffering a slow and agonizing death since before we originally started The Sentinel in 1989. I remember, at the time, telling one of my college classmates – whose family owns a well-known west coast newspaper publishing company – that I was starting a newspaper. He told me I was crazy. He had seen, first-hand, the erosion of the traditional newspaper business model. I told him, while the decline in the newspaper Continue Reading “What a Difference 27 Years Make”