At first glance one might miss the Courant (the whole pile) as other newspapers appear to reach for the heavens, and conceal it with their shadows. The newspaper appears to have the girth of a pencil shaving, whittled from an old school # 2.
The front page, of Monday’s paper, dons the photograph of a women chomping down on an apple while “balancing a handful of others that she had just picked.” Of all the possible pictures, from any event that was going in CT this past weekend, they agreed to put this picture on the front page. I have no idea what they were thinking. Your eye is brought to this picture, because it takes up the most room on the cover. If I was Shivani Madan, I would not be pleased by the way the Courant sold out my dignity in order to sell papers. Right next to the photograph is a bi-line that reads, “Workplace violence: How Common is it?” Above the photograph is a headline that states “A jump in Homelessness” that includes a bar graph that displays the information gained from a statewide survey showing 4,154 residents are currently living in shelters or outdoors. However the human interest story about Apple picking surviving a cold and rainy growing season draws in the reader’s attention. What a good way to bury the real news behind the illusion of state happiness.
Many years ago, I was a subscriber and an avid reader of the Courant. It was larger and incorporated what I considered the best that Connecticut news papers could offer. Looking at the its competition of the New Haven Registrar, the New London Day, the Connecticut Post and so on one was to ascertain that the courant offered its readers the best articles and the best quality over the other options. That was until one day when they realized that they were beginning to lose their customer base and decided to dumb down the writing rather than making strives to raise the quality and maintain its, better than most, reputation, thus leaving the public with ramblings of writers that were writing for the 3rd grade reading levels. It was around this same time that the editorial staff began to stop correcting the writer’s grammar and punctuation. It seemed that sentences were going on forever, as they read like they were written by immigrants that just got of the boat from wherever they came.
Today, the Courant consists of 3 measly sections: CT News, CT Sports and CT Living. Hidden, amongst the section entitled CT News, is the World and Nation section that, at most, is 3 pages long. This section appears to give each story equal press. Roman Polanski’s arrest shares a page with the story about economic sanctions, created by the west, are affecting Iran’s young people forcing them to change their “nuclear ambitions.” It seems that the most important world news does not seem to be an investment that The Courant cares to make.
The all important sports section still the highlight of the day to any sports fan. There is nothing like waking up on a nice crisp fall day and reading about the BOSTON Red Sox, New England Patriots, New York Jets , Giants, and Yankees. You can check the scores and compare them to scores and records from all around the league. There are injury reports for the gambler and box scores if you missed the game. However, if you want to read about your state’s professional sports, you need to move to Massachusetts or New York. The state of Connecticut cannot sustain a professional sports team. Why? I don’t know? Last week we even got news that one of our semi pro teams are relocating down south. Maybe they are all running away because of the bad press. The Courant is a bad paper. It once stood tall and held itself up with respect. Today, the Courant only is a sad degraded newspaper that seems to insult its readers with subpar writing and less meat than its competitors. Yesterday, there was news about Obama wanting to extend the school year as a way to raise student achievement circulating around the internet. It was showing up on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, however, there is no mention of this anywhere in the Courant. I find it ironic that the Courant dedicates the exact amount of press to the funny pages as it does for their coverage of World and national news. If that does not work as a metaphor for its media presence, I am not sure what would.
After reading some of the articles, I had a hard time swallowing the poison pill that was being served to me in the form of right winged media manipulation. I am not sure why it was so hard for me after seeinhow many correspondants also worked Fox 61 news. It occurred to me that a state that is populated, mostly by democrats, this line of persuasion would fall upon deaf ears. Just mylast and final thoughts on the dying institution tht was once so noble.
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