competition? It doesn't seem to exist anymore.....

Man, do I feel cheated this Sunday by my subscriptions to our two newspapers…. the Beacon and the Plain Dealer.

Of course coming from an era where the biggest thrill a newsman could have was beating the competition, I think readers are really getting cheated by newspapers picking up the same stories, word for word and byline by byline.

This Sunday was one of the worse I’ve ever seen.

The Beacon featured and took up most of Page one with a school double-dip story and it looks like a lot of research and time went into it.

Then, when I opened the front page of the Plain Dealer, the same story dominated the page!!.

So I might as well cancel one of my subscriptions…why pay double to read the same story?

Of course it happens all the time in the local section of both newspapers…but usually what one paper has one day, the other doesn’t have it until the next.

Once upon a time (sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale, doesn’t it?) if we used a story from another paper, we had a reporter try to find a new angle and at least pretend the story was fresh.

So much for competition. Is it any wonder newspapers keep losing readers?

There’s no competition, there’s no drive to be first with something.

It’s let’s just clone the other fellow…after all, how many subscriptions really overlap?

I’ve withheld criticism of today’s papers because I realize it’s a new era..an era of the bottom line, not good journalist.

I’m sure the same thoughts and frustrations exist with today’s news people….the grunts in the line of fire…and I feel for them. I think they want to do the best job they can and they do under the thumb of that old bottom line.

---------------------------------------tom moore

41 years in the business.