Friday, July 3, 2009

A holiday and a newspaper ad


This is the holiday that precedes the Fourth of July. With Independence Day falling on a Saturday, the holiday — the day off from work — has to be switched to Friday. For me and the millions of other unemployed across the country, this is a blessing. We are like everyone else today, at least in one way: We're not going to work.

At our house, this meant a leisurely breakfast on the deck, a cool breeze blowing and a Carolina blue sky above, good, freshly ground coffee and an unusual treat for breakfast. The flag is flying out front as my wife and I attend to chores (including this one) and await the arrival of our weekend company.

Today is a good time to consider the new release from the Newspaper Project, a nonprofit organization that aims to find a viable business strategy for print newspapers. One of the Newspaper Project's projects has been a series of nicely designed ads that extol the irreplaceable importance of newspapers and the huge and multi-faceted audience newspapers deliver for advertisers. An earlier ad pointed out that more people read the Sunday paper than watched the football game on Super Bowl Sunday. Here's the latest ad from the Newspaper Project.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This might be a good time to consider that most people who are unemployed don't have the comforts and luxuries you describe in your frilly narrative. And the only part of the paper they look at are the want ads.

Erstwhile Editor said...

If Anonymous is so unfamiliar with current employment trends as to think newspaper want ads are a regular source of job leads, he's totally out of touch. Of the scores of jobs I've applied for, only two I can recall were advertised in a newspaper. Nearly all want ads have gone to the Web, at both government sites, such as www.ncesc.com or private sites, such as monster.com. The Newspaper Project's ad points out that people, with or without "luxuries" and "comforts" find information they desire in newspapers. And the unemployed do read things, both in print and on the net, that are not job listings.

Anonymous said...

,,,what is wrong anony #1. Bitter?

di Bivar said...

",,,what is wrong anony #1. Bitter?"


Is there some reason you keep allowing non-sequiturs that attack other peoples comments on this Blog? We've noticed this happening more and more.

Because that is where you are headed. It will only force people who have something on-topic to contribute (in reply to your blog entries) avoid this blog entirely.

Erstwhile Editor said...

re. di Bivar's admonishment about non-sequitur comments: Although I "moderate" comments by reviewing them before they are posted onto the blog, I try to allow some latitude in comments made on this blog. Anonymous No. 1 made a comment I found catty, and I attempted to respond to it in a reasonable manner to further explain my initial post, which Anonymous 1 found "frilly." Anonymous 2's comment, while sarcastic or even antagonistic, seemed no more offensive than Anonymous 1's remark, so I allowed it.
These comments are reminders of how easy it is to be crude, cruel and sarcastic so long as one has the protection of anonymity. They have again made me consider whether I should disallow anonymous comments altogether. Unfortunately, the blogging software does not provide a means of guaranteeing a true and verifiable identity, so pseudonyms would still allow commenters to hide their identity.