That code-share agreement

Wasn't so hard to get after all, now was it?

Cape Air's flight schedule seems insanely ambitious to me for a city where air service has been neglected for so long, but let's hope they can pull it off.

Common Cause

Once in a while, an event happens that brings the vast majority of Americans together for a common purpose.

Such as rooting against the freakin' Yankees.

In Case You Were Wondering Whether Times Have Changed,

Five regular folks expressed their opinions on the Whig's "Five Times Five" page today, and all of them said that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should be repealed.

Well, I'll Be Doggoned

When I read the phrase "service in Micronesia commenced in 2004," I thought, no way, another weird editing lapse. But darned if that's not correct! Cape Air flies routes from Guam to Rota to Saipan. Can't connect directly from Quincy, but that's ok.

Hey, if they can keep ticket costs down and as a side benefit cut $250,000 out of the airport budget, I'm all for 'em.

Jump: Words Here

Nah, why bother. Nobody reads the jump head anyway.

Fun Facts

"The car crashed through a window measuring 9 feet 11 inches by 10 feet 7 inches on the Broadway side[.]"

OK, I appreciate the exactness of the measurement. I would have thought about this story much differently had the window been a full 10 feet wide.

Of all the ignoramuses that the H-W lets onto its editorial page,

I have a hard time deciding whether Oliver North or Walter Williams is the worst. I gotta go with Williams because of his pretensions to intellectuality; North at least makes no bones about being a thickskull.

Today's Williams column features one source that is 12 years old, one that is 8 years old, and one new "source" from a right-wing foundation.

Worse yet, he's talking about a truly serious issue, one where I agree with him on most of his points. I just wish his work wasn't so lazy, sloppy, and politicized.

The thing I don't get about the planning kerfluffle

...is that the number "68,277" keeps getting thrown around, and people talk about how the county needs to plan for growth. That 68,277 is from the 2000 census. The Census Bureau estimated the county's population at 66,897 in 2008, a decline of 1,380.

Shouldn't the county be planning how to deal with this decline in population instead? I should think that with an aging population and fewer people overall, they might be thinking about reallocations and reductions instead.

PR 101

For you laypeople out there who don't know what the bloggers are all fussing about, here's some background.

Newsmakers and news organizations need each other. Newsmakers need the exposure, while news organizations need a constant flow of news releases, orchestrated events, and tips from newsmakers to fill their pages and airtime. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Newsmakers constantly send out news releases, typically marked "For Immediate Release," which means that news organizations can do with them whatever they want....trash them (the most common fate), run them as written (lazy but all too common, alas), use them as the basis for their own stories, combine them with other material, whatever.

Less often, newsmakers send out embargoed material...."media advisories" or "advance releases," with restrictions on their release. Sometimes the embargoed material is just a tip, not a story. Sometimes it has a specified release time. For example, let's say WIU is going to hold a press conference on Friday to announce that Chuck Scholz has been named its new football coach. It would probably send out an embargoed press kit, so that local media would know to be there, but with the understanding that they wouldn't release the information until after the news conference.

So what happens if the news organization violates that gentleman's agreement and goes ahead with embargoed material anyway?

Not much. The news organization gets a scoop for a day, or maybe a few hours. But your newsmaker is going to be really pissed off, because they were planning a nice orchestrated event and the news organization went and spoiled it. It happens now and then. To follow the above hypothetical example, if WGEM prematurely announced the naming of the new coach, it could claim to have scooped everyone else (even though everybody had the information already, but chose to honor the embargo). WIU would be royally pissed, because WGEM would have stepped on its carefully planned announcement with big muddy feet.

In the rare occasions when a news organization breaks an embargo, it can expect that the newsmaker will slap back....usually in the form of freezing out its reporters for a while. But that slapback never lasts long because (remember)....it's a symbiotic relationship. They need each other.

So that's what happened with Dick Durbin and WTAD/QNO. They shit on his embargo, and the senator's press person slapped back. You can expect it to last a few months, then they'll be back to normal again. It's a squabble inside the news nest, not a conspiracy, blacklist, or any of those other silly inflammatory labels.

Yeah, we have a problem

October 2005 - Average paid circulation 26,727
October 2006 - Average paid circulation 26,639
October 2007 - Average paid circulation 24,183
October 2008 - Average paid circulation 19,805
October 2009 - Average paid circulation 18,882

For those of you keeping score at home, that's a 29 percent decline. Can't blame it on QuincyNews.org, either . . . it started before QNO appeared on the scene.

That's the world of newspapers these days.

Buried Treasure

Hey everybody! A few years ago I buried a bag of gold coins about 20 feet deep. Dropped 'em down a well and then filled it up.

They're over in my neighbor's yard, right underneath the water feature with the little cupid.

Have at it!