In light of the sadness last week, I am happy to report that there is a new website covering Columbia County. If you live up here, please register to show some support.
Applause to the editor for getting right back on the horse and filling the local media void.
P.S. Cape Town is awesome.
FAU and family are going on our first "real" vacation since MLTU was born. We're off to visit Em's sister in Cape Town, South Africa.
Yes, it's 17 hours on a plane with two kids, yes I hate flying and yes I won't be able to do my normal "two drinks before the flight and fall asleep for half the time", but when that part is over we will be in South Africa for a week!
I love that Em's sense of adventure trumps my desire to be a home-body. It's one of those "she makes me a better person" things that I really love about her.
I'll be offline for a while. If you know me on FB I may be making status updates there when I can, otherwise they'll be pictures up when I get back.
Looks like Em's days as an intrepid reporter are over (or at least suspended).
Our local newspaper shut its doors yesterday despite being profitable, despite having great reporting, despite being the only real source of solid local news in two upstate New York counties.
What's really sad to me is the loss for the community. Yes, Em has lost an income stream, but it wasn't a huge one for us. And yes it means that someone else who is very close to our family is out of a job (if you know me, you'll know who it is and he is OK, in fact he is really excited and has some plans in the works). But the biggest loss is to the community.
Where I live we are kind of caught between several "big" news areas -- too far north for the Hudson valley papers to cover us and just far enough outside of the Capital Region to get any coverage beyond the big stories. But what about the day to day? The town and village meeting, the school boards, the Eagle Scouts and Honor Rolls, the local elections and smaller development issues and hell, even the police blotter.
These are the details that bind our local interests together and make us a real community and now we have no one covering them (for now).
Allegedly, attempts to buy the paper were rebuffed. It seems that it had more value as an accounting write-off then as a sale. Well, this is one subscriber saying that is bulls***. Today I am sad.
