Impressed by the Press

Okay, as recently as yesterday, I called the Middletown Press pathetic.

Like many local newspapers, whose glory days have been wrung from them by greedy corporate owners, The Middletown Press was once a respected and respectable daily. But as readership dwindled, and continues to dwindle, corporate ownership has only exacerbated the problem by cutting news staff to the point where, on some days, The Middletown Press, has only a single real news story about the town listed on its masthead. That's shameful. If you want to kill a newspaper, there's no better way than to eliminate the local news.

Local news reporting is important for a lot of reasons, not the lease of which is to let local government know that someone is watching, and maybe things will get better when the Press leaves its old building and moves into Main Street Market. It's a brave move, and one that should be good for downtown.

Now let's concentrate on good reporting.