Newspapers aren’t magazines, with long lead times. YOU try writing 3 stories in 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, often, and see how well YOU do. Plus, since newspapers are laying off people left and right, there are fewer and fewer people to do more and more work. It doesn’t benefit anyone, the journalist or the reader. Reporters in most places aren’t allowed the luxury of “only” reporting and writing the news — they also have to shoot video, record audio, upload it all to the paper’s website, and do their own page layout. All on deadline. Every day of the year, including holidays. The only excuse for not coming to work is if you are comatose or dead.

If you want to complain, complain to the huge ownership groups that have outsourced copy editing to India (totally not kidding) — or designated a “central” copy editing location for a group of papers across an entire state, so that no one in the central location will have any idea that Joe Smith of Burlington really spells his name Joh Smyth and is the dogcatcher, not the police chief. The people who are working hours of unpaid overtime and still making poverty-level wages don’t deserve the grief. There is no excuse for a college graduate with a full-time job in this country to be living in HUD housing and receive food stamps, and yet I know several journalists who are.

Moral of the story: If you want better coverage, work on the people who are lining their pockets at the expense of their work force, and thus at the expense of the public.

Mucandy said it all and said it well, now if there was just a way to rectify this appalling situation!!!