8 responses to “The same old story.”

1. 

   alex said on January 30, 2006 at 12:11 pm

   Speaking of which, did the News-Sentinel just eliminate the rest of its staff or something? Today’s edition looks to be largely filler copy from local high school newspapers, as well as another large piece contributed by the editor of one of the local freebie weeklies.

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2. 

   brian stouder said on January 30, 2006 at 5:04 pm

   I read the New Yorker review linked to Collapse – looks like an excellent book. Is it exerting a good pull upon you?

   The newspaper leaving town in Hazard, just when the coal industry is taking off again, and miners will start dying in numbers again – seems to tie in with the theme; a sort of collapse of responsibility or accountability.

   In a perfect world, it wouldn’t take a newspaper to shame businesses into acting responsibly (not to mention LAWFULLY!) – but it ain’t a perfect world, is it?

   And the pendulum swings the other way, even when you’re just sure that we’ve left certain things behind, and moved into a better day. Interesting that the near-disaster in the Canadian potash mine turned into a textbook case of how to do things right

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3. 

   nancy said on January 30, 2006 at 6:13 pm

   Yes, “Collapse” is quite good, but it’s not hooking me the way “Guns, Germs and Steel” did. I’m skipping around in it, having started with the Greenland section; I’m far too interested in the idea of a bunch of Norsemen establishing a colony in such hostile territory in the Middle Ages. His theme is pretty clear: It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

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4. 

   mary said on January 30, 2006 at 6:55 pm

   The John McPhee book, “Against Nature” is good too.

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5. 

   brian stouder said on January 30, 2006 at 10:25 pm

   “I’m far too interested in the idea of a bunch of Norsemen establishing a colony in such hostile territory”

   I’ve been hooked into a book about the fight in the North Atlantic in the horrible winter of 1942-43 (Bloody Winter, by John Waters).

   Allied convoys of slow (6 or 7 knots) freighters and tankers, escorted by 3 or 4 corvettes and maybe a few obsolete World War One flush-deck destroyers, and if they were lucky, a modern long-legged US Coast Guard cutter or two (that is to say, seven or eight armed combatants to screen 40-50 merchantmen spread in columns across 100 square miles or more of ocean) would proceed until a U-boat spotted them, and trailed them while the wolf packs formed up on their homing beacon – until 20 or 30 of them would converge upon and and attempt to slaughter the convoy in night-time attacks.

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6. 

   brian stouder said on January 30, 2006 at 10:30 pm

   Ooops! Looks like I suffered from premature articulation!

   Anyway – there was an Allied base in the fijords of Iceland – but the damned gales would come up within the space of an hour or two, and they’d go from calm seas to 100 knot hurricanes.

   ‘Course, at sea – at least the U-boat threat subsided somewhat when 40 foot seas were surging – but you still had to survive the weather.

   But I noted that Greenland wasn’t coming into the equation at all – and as marginal as Iceland was for a base of operations, God only knows how bad Greenland must have been!

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7. 

   harry near indy said on January 31, 2006 at 3:29 am

   g– d— m—– f—— gannett!

   cheap b——-!

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8. 

   Domoni said on February 5, 2006 at 11:26 pm

   True, harry. I can agree from experience. I was with the C-J before Gannett and on through their first year. Sad to say, but the Courier was on the way out of Hazard before Gannett bought the company. The people out in the state haven’t really embraced the Louisville paper for close to 20 years.

   In the article, Bingham, Jr. makes a good point about the profit margins under his watch. But, even then the paper was retreating back to Louisville and consolidating services. It’s just the nature of the media.

   I’d like to see a new strong local voice fill the void left by the C-J.

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