Wow, I am so shocked about something I just read in my hometown newspaper, I’m almost speechless; and, in fact, jumped over here to write about it while I’m still processing the shock before I finished reading the rest of the paper (or the rest of the article, for that matter).
Yesterday it was announced that the Tennessean is cutting service to ten counties west of Dickson. I probably shouldn’t be quite as surprised as I am, as we’ve been discussing media matters (as in old school vs. current technology) here around the regional blogosphere for some time now, and I guess the writing’s been on the wall – especially now, with these outrageous fuel costs in this country. Still, the actuality of this has me stunned.
I wasn’t all that surprised a little over a week ago when my hometown newspaper announced that The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ daily newspaper, was going to cease circulation in my home county (and, I would assume, my other home county next door where I went to high school). This is strictly my opinion, but I think the CA shot itself in the foot a few years ago – a foot that was already tenuous, at best, in Northwest Tennessee – when the decision was made to decrease news coverage of most anything north of Jackson.
Initially, that included the obituaries, which was about the only reason I still subscribed to the print version of the CA the last ten years that I did, so I could keep up with things like that that I needed to know back home. A little later – and after what I would assume were many complaints (I know they received two for sure) – they revised the decision a bit and began to re-include that region in the obituaries, but they never did quite get back up to speed with it and they frequently missed a lot, and pretty much the same with the news in general.
It just never did quite get back to speed and return to being the “overall” regional coverage and inclusion of all things not only Memphis but the broad surrounding area that, frankly, to me was always far superior to The Tennessean until maybe seven or eight years ago. I stopped subscribing to home delivery in the early part of this decade, partially due to the rising cost and the convenience of being able to read it online anyway, but mainly because of the decrease in regional coverage from north of Jackson. The decrease in general news coverage was actually pretty gradual over time, but the day they killed the obituaries was probably the death knell for a lot of people with the CA - both those living in Northwest Tennessee and those of us with a vested interest in the region.
So it’s not really a surprise to me that the CA is quitting Northwest Tennessee. I expect there were very few home delivery subscribers – if any – left, and doubt there were many buying it out of what few CA stands were still left around up yonder.
And when it comes down to it, like I said, the CA‘s foothold in the region has probably always been tenuous at best because that’s basically a Nashville news area – just about smack in the middle of the two, but just a little closer to Nashville and (more importantly, probably) an area which has been served by Nashville television and radio lo these many years. Before other stations started creeping in and then cable just exploded into a million channels, you had the three big Nashville network affiliates plus the PBS station, and then the alternate network stations in Paducah, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, and the other PBS station in Lexington, and that was it. You had to get closer to Jackson to get Memphis TV stations.
So, being almost all Nashville news towns TV-wise, that area has always been pretty pro-Tennessean vs. The Commercial Appeal as well, so – again – the CA‘s demise in that area’s not surprising. You had people who subscribed to both – we did, my family – but we were likely in the minority. We actually subscribed for years to home delivery of the CA daily and Sunday, and only subscribed to the Sunday Tennessean, but then again we had a daily paper in town most of my life. Until about six or seven years ago, anytime I was at home visiting, I went out on Sundays I was there and picked up both the Memphis and Nashville papers. Our preference for the CA was probably partially due to my parents both having gone to college in Memphis, but also I think we just generally all agreed the CA was superior to the Tennessean.
But that’s not at all true of most folks up there; like I said, those are mostly pro-Tennessean towns just west and just east of the Tennessee River, so I’m just really shocked that the paper is going to discontinue all service up there – not even in stores or on the paper racks. And so soon on the heels of the CA‘s same decision, and especially when the Tennessean‘s always been so far ahead of the CA in popularity (and, one would assume, sales). But in this case, I guess better sales (for whatever that was worth in this day and age) no longer makes up for the astronomical rise in fuel costs, as well as other expenses.
But even though I haven’t actually resided in Northwest Tennessee since 1985, it is kind of freaking me out to think of both those papers not being there – at least the Sunday editions. This is actually a pretty large area we’re talking about and – man. It’s weird to think about, and it’s going to also be really strange not to see newspaper racks around up there (or at least not but a couple).
If I wasn’t so hyper-aware of the issue, maybe I wouldn’t even notice they’re not around anymore, I don’t know. But right now I’m just picturing in my head the sight of outside the post office in downtown Paris, by the door of all the convenience stores in Paris and Camden, the racks by the cash register of dozens of other stores – all those places that I knew, if I wanted (or needed) to run out and get a Sunday Tennessean or CA, they’d be there. And now they won’t be. And that’s weird.
So that pretty much leaves a fairly large area without a large newspaper service, not even on Sunday. Well, there is one large-ish paper – if you could even call it that – not as big as the other two, still around (for now). But if you can’t be nice, and all that, you know. That’s why I’m not going to say anything else at all about that one.
I don’t know. It’s weird. I think we’ve all sort of seen this coming, but just now with this it really and truly seems like the real beginning of the end of an era now, to me anyway, and that’s of course from a total layman’s point of view. But not only am I just freaked out about what if I am back home and want a Sunday paper and have to drive an hour in either direction to get one, of course; I’m concerned for the friends (like this one and this one and this one and this one) and family who are right at the heart of it all too.
No Sunday papers in a ten-county area, gas prices looking like they’re pushing towards five bucks a gallon, and I just noticed my dog’s usual (and previously relatively inexpensive) dog food has gone up nearly an entire four dollars a bag. My salary’s certainly taken a big hit this year catastrophically – and I’m obviously not a “normal” case – but even if I was still working the same job, I’m pretty sure my salary wouldn’t have gone up much (if at all), and I imagine many others are in the same boat. What’s next? I’m honestly beginning to dread to even wonder.
