PeoriaStory

The ghost paper

PEORIA, IL -- The Peoria Journal Star has become what is called a "ghost paper,"  a shadow of its former self.(Listen to On the Media's podcast "We Are Putting Out a Damn Paper.)

Apparently the PJS editors have all been fired, so that stories end up missing valuable information.  Instead they become propaganda pieces for whoever is interviewed, from the police to the developers.  For example:

Two recent front page Sunday stories on the murder of Dr. Marshall, an art collector, 90 years old, living on one of the best streets in northeast Peoria, has omitted key information. Just how did the murder suspect target him? A caregiver? A handyman?  Police said the suspect, an unlike art lover, was part of a ring of burglars, so what about the rest of them?  The PJS isn't telling us.  No time to find out, apparently.

Then in the July 11 paper, a long story on a planned pavilion for Donovan Park, is also missing key information:

What percentage of the park would this take?  What about parking, driveways, lighting (shielded?  I doubt it) and even the vintage observatory? 

Which habitats for birds, butterflies, prairie plants and small mammals would be destroyed? Comparing it to Cyds restaurant in the park is ridiculous.

Why  not renovate the Glen Oak Pavilion and Peoria Stadium for large outdoor venues?

There are already large and small competing venues not filled with audiences now including the Civic Center, Dozer Field and the Riverfront Pavilion.

The story doesn't even say when the crucial vote will occur at a park district board meeting, or whether there will be a public hearing. (July meetings are scheduled for July 14 and 28, and comments can be submitted via the website.)

Poor journalism, from busy reporters without time to find out key issues, and with no sharp editors overseeing their stories.  Sad.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

The PJS -- why?

PEORIA, IL -- Of all the crazy things the Peoria Journal Star does from laying off its top reporters to tolerating carriers who toss the newspaper in the flowerbed, , here's one that readers really, really hate: editing letters to the editor.

Activist Terry Knapp is the PJS's latest victim.  And instead of growling to friends, he asked to get the full letter published.  He said many friends worked with him on the letter, and it deserves to be read.   So in the interest of free speech, here it is:

Karma IN The Air

An editorial in support of the 2019 Missouri Valley Tournament Champion and NCAA Tournament MVC Representative Bradley Braves basketball program.

According to Buddha : "Believe in nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense." What has gone on recently with the Bradley Braves basketball team and its hometown media just makes no sense. Remember BU coaches and administration, people who belittle and demean you, criticize and insult you, pick you apart, and judge you, are the most negative and toxic people alive. Then when you stand up for yourself and fight back, they tell others that you are the toxic one. They act insulted and say this because they can't stand it when you no longer allow them to run all over you, and treat you like trash. They can't admit their own horrible behavior, so they try to make it look like you're the bad guy.  We all know that "blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make yours shine any brighter", yet they have tried to do just that.

Confucius said "people who know the least, seem to know it the loudest", but even I know that saying something louder, doesn't make it any more right!

In Peoria IL and around this great country of ours, Media often think they can slander you and get away with it under the protection of our first amendment. Media should realize what goes around comes around. Bob Knight said "all of us learned to write in the second grade, most of us go on to greater things" and I am starting to think he may be right when I observe what has gone on between the Peoria Journal Star and Bradley University lately.

The above things having been said:

I want to thank Coach Brian Wardle and Athletic Director Chris Reynolds for their commitment to the students and athletes of Bradley University, Too bad these two guys didn't have more support from the Peoria Journal Star, their own administration and some others in the Peoria Community at large.

Terry Knapp and a few fans

Compare it with the letter printed in the newspaper on March 25, 2019.

The paragraph about Buddha got cut. 

Well this is not the worst sin of the PJS, which actually does a pretty good job of covering the basic news, given the cuts to the newsroom staff.   But Knapp was furious, since he and others worked on the letter.  The "fans" didn't even get credit in the signature.  Oh well,....

 -- Elaine Hopkins

 

 

 

 

A Great Story About Today's Newspapers

PEORIA, IL -- Here's a great story about today's newspapers.  It includes GateHouse, owner of the Peoria Journal Star and every other downstate daily except the Pantagraph, and explains what is happening to its properties.

Click on this if you want to know more. 

Or this: http://prospect.org/article/saving-free-press-private-equity

-- Elaine Hopkins

Mainstream news media failures

PEORIA, IL --Two failures of the mainstream news media are apparent today.

The first is a shocking story from Alternet and US Right to Know.  It details how journalists mindlessly quote authorities on food and agriculture who have taken money from Monsanto, but don't disclose this bias.

Their so-called expert opinions have been bought.  And thus are worthless.

A story in the PJS is among those listed.

Then check out the headline in the print edition of the  Nov. 27 PJS -- urging readers to shop in local stores.  That's great, but very hypocritical of the newspaper, owned by a Wall Street hedge fund. 

Most of the PJS ad money goes straight to Wall Street instead of being invested in the newspaper to improve its coverage.

The best locally owned newspaper offering stories to the highest standards of journalism is the monthly Community Word. (Full disclosure, I am an investor in the CW.)

The ad money for the CW stays in central Illinois and recirculates, as the PJS ad revenues once did.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

August Community Word is good

PEORIA, IL -- The August issue of the monthly Community Word is out, and it's the best issue yet, with stories the mainstream media has yet to explore.

It's available or will be available throughout Peoria at grocery stores, libraries, and other places.  

It's also on the web. but the August issue has not yet been posted there.  The July issue is there, and it's also a good issue.

Former Journal Star reporter Clare Howard is the managing editor.  She won many awards at the PJS as an investigative reporter, and it shows in the stories she pursues for the CW.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

No PJS for 3 days...

PEORIA, IL -- Print may be thought obsolete by some, but not me. Here is my email to Peoria Journal Star publisher Ken Mauser today, after three days without the print edition of the Peoria Journal Star:

 

We have not had a paper Sunday, Monday or today.  Our street was cleared yesterday.

We called the voice mail number, 309/686-3161, and because we have missed so many papers we are sent to an operator, and placed on endless hold which ties up our land line.  Plus they never answer.  (How about an option where they call us back?)

When we go to the circulation website, we're asked for a password that does not match the password we use for the PJS website.  That's nuts.  We dont know what it is and dont care to screw up further our computer's password system by getting another one for the PJS circulation, which likely will require yet another one for PJS.com when we access it (which is rarely, since it's full of obnoxious pop up ads (we and others boycott those advertisers) and the stories are hard to find sometimes.)

So now what?  We want these 3 papers, even late.  Not credits, the papers.

How do we get them, as well as future papers?  Do we have to put our sign back in the yard (not easy, because everything is frozen.)

Or should we just place our account on vacation whenever a storm is threatened?

People ask me constantly what has happened to the PJS.   Now I can't even tell them if the papers are no longer delivered.  (So much for outsourcing the delivery!  This never used to happen.)

 -- Elaine Hopkins

 

In addition, I wonder how many advertisers know that many newspapers are not being delivered! 

UPDATE 1/8/14: The PJS for Monday, Tues and Wed. were delivered today. A kind friend had already shared the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday newspapers with us on Tuesday, for which we are grateful. No response from Mauser, though.

Disgusting PJS/GateHouse story

PEORIA -- Here's a disgusting story that ran on Sept. 14 in the print edition of Peoria Journal Star, though it ran earlier in the Springfield newspaper, and is posted on that paper's website. 

It involves a celebration of the trapping of otters in Illinois -- 2,000 killed last year.

Here's an email I sent to the author, reporter Chris Young:

As a journalist you should be ashamed of the story on otter trapping, which ran in the Peoria Journal Star today.

It's totally one sided -- no effort made to interview people who view trapping as cruel and inhumane.

Trapping is disgusting and should be banned, not celebrated.  It causes extreme animal suffering.

Otters are intelligent, lively creatures who should not be trapped for their fur, which likely is going to Asia, given anti-fur attitudes in the more enlightened world. 

The price of fur?  Ridiculous argument. If people are so poor they need to trap to eat, they can get
food stamps.

If people want to get out into the outdoors, they should take cameras, not guns and traps.
Photography is much more challenging than using a gun or trap on a helpless creature.

It's biased stories like yours that fail to present other points of view that cause backward attitudes in the US. For shame.

It's also biased reporting like this that has been killing US newspapers, as their reports do not present the whole truth:  fair, accurate, comprehensive.

No wonder people won't buy newspapers any more.

Why an email and not a comment?

I don't do comments to the GateHouse papers because they require a FaceBook log-on, exploiting the individual's information on FaceBook for advertising and other purposes. Astute web readers must have noticed that GateHouse/PJS web stories don't have many comments any more.  They stopped when the FaceBook program began.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

 

GateHouse filing bankruptcy, Bloomberg News says

PEORIA -- GateHouse Media, Inc., owner of the Peoria Journal Star and most other downstate newspapers, except for the Bloomington Pantagraph, will file for bankruptcy, Bloomberg News says.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-04/fortress-to-create-new-media-with-newcastle-assets.html

But the story hints that the hedge fund types still have it all sewed up.  They've apparently looted all they can under the present structure, so they're setting up another structure, to keep sending the abundant ad money to Wall Street from the cities and towns of Illinois and other communities.

Stay tuned.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

Great story on the huge issues of the day, including the fate of journalism

PEORIA -- How about this for a summary of Illinois politics:

"We think that the dividing lines are becoming clearer and that, increasingly, Democrats are being forced to make a choice between obeying corporate contributors or responding to their party base - and to independents and progressive third-party activists with the Greens and state-based groupings such as the Vermont Progressive Party. This is healthy because the Democratic Party has, for too long, tried to have it both ways: presenting itself as an advocate for working Americans while often implementing a corporate agenda on issues such as trade policy and banking reform."

And they might have added pension security.

That's a quote from an interesting interview with John Nichols and Robert McChesney, great reporters and writers who have penned a new book.

"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) writes of the new book Dollarocracy, by John Nichols and Robert McChesney:

With this book, John Nichols and Bob McChesney invite Americans to examine the challenges facing America in new ways, and to fully recognize the threat that the combination of big money and big media poses to the promise of self-government. They paint a daunting picture, rich in detail based on intense reporting and groundbreaking research. But they do not offer us a pessimistic take. Rather, they call us, as Tom Paine did more than two centuries ago, to turn knowledge into power. And they tell us that we can and must respond to our contemporary challenges as a nation by rejecting the Dollarocracy and renewing our commitment to democracy."

 

Read the article.  Buy the book.

-- Elaine Hopkins

ALEC protest blackout

PEORIA -- There was a huge protest on Aug. 8 in Chicago against the ALEC convention there.  ALEC is the CEO-financed group that has fostered extreme right wing policies in Congress and the state legislatures, including pension theft, war on women, no gun control, anti-environment and anti-union laws, etc. 

But there was no news coverage in the mainstream media about the protest.  Here is Fred Kronsky's post about it.  It's worth reading.

What a shame.

Now we have Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post at a bargain price, a couple of days after Obama went to Amazon's plant.  Bezos is anti-union, runs sweatshops, and has a huge contract to supply computing technology to the CIA. The only place to hear about this is Democracy Now.

Here's the headline: How The Washington Post’s New Owner Aided the CIA, Blocked WikiLeaks & Decimated the Book Industry.

Say goodbye to real mainstream reporting in the digital age. 

And now for the latest on Honey Boo Boo and Kim Kardashian...

 -- Elaine Hopkins