Where's the Beef? Part 2: The Reckoning

For the record, I'm only doing posts (potential series?) on Fayette Patch Hunky because I feel that when a blog is posting questionable information, it needs addressed. Especially when I know things to be different than what they claim and can't count on my comments being published, and if they are, read by other readers. For more comprehensive disclaimer-y statements, check out the first post I did on this.

What I'm looking at this time two more attacks on HeraldStandard.com. The first is criticism at the new online subscriptions. The second is just...well, we'll get to it.

So, the online subscriptions thing. I thought about mentioning this myself but under a different context, but I since I knew I wanted to do another Patch Hunky post I figured I'd kill two deer with one shotgun (or car). Basically, if you sign up with an email address, you can read ten free articles per month, which really is probably not a bad deal unless you read every single thing and don't have a print subscription. And if you do have a print subscription, you get a discount, but really, who needs to pay for the same publication twice? But whatever.

If you're more of a news junkie, this does kinda suck, but so does being a newspaper in the age of the internet. They have to keep up somehow to stay in business, which is exactly what papers still are, even they do serve the community in various ways. They probably don't really stand to lose much on this, except a few cheap people, and the pay-for-online-content model isn't really new to newspapers.

Now, the second Patch Hunky point is all about schools being investigated for possible PSSA cheating. Reminds me of the nuns of Montessori walking around during the Iowa tests and making faces or disapproving sounds to let us know we'd gotten a question wrong. Anyway, Patch Hunky is complaining about some holes in HS's story, which is fair, but like I've said before, sometimes that's faulty reporting or even bad sources rather editors intentionally censoring information.

Patch Hunky is also calling for an investigation on the issue from the paper. A paper that probably doesn't have the manpower or resources to do a big investigative story, especially when it covers county-wide news.

This is all to be expected, though, and might even be fair criticisms. Until they allege that the paper ran a fake letter to the editor. Such an action is entirely possible, sure, but this is the first I've heard of it and a Google search turned up nothing more. So, we have a blog that's criticizing shoddy reporting and is making very serious allegations with zero support or even elaboration. Very nice.

The only editor's name that comes up throughout all of this? Mark O'Keefe, despite the fact that there are plenty of other editors over there. When I write for them, I don't report to O'Keefe. Not when I pitch ideas and not even when I submit articles, though there may be one or two exceptions to that in that three consecutive summers I spent writing for them. Patch Hunky's criticisms are getting to the point that I wonder if they were--or feel--somehow wrong by O'Keefe.