In case youre wondering, those of us who live along the banks of the Connecticut River, especially residents of Northampton and Amherst, sometimes refer to our blissful progressive community as the Happy Valley. We have long had a pleasant little newspaper called the Daily Hampshire Gazette that kept us informed and published the letters to the editor you would expect from us. But, alas, the Gazette has changed owners and now I feel as though I am little red riding hood seeing a wolf hiding in her grandmas nightgown. My longtime friend, the Gazette, is now publishing features and letters on the opinion pages telling us how grateful we should be to the Bush administration for protecting us from terrorism, and in response to the popes hateful remarks they published an article by a catechism teacher and former marine telling us that, yes, all Moslems are violent fanatics. Even news about the governors race tells us that Patrick is full of wishful thinking while Healey deals in facts.
HELP! Whats a girl to do?
Or better yet, start a blog. 🙂
Stop buying the paper!
I haven’t read the Gazette regularly for a while — they’re pretty expensive for not very much content, and the Amherst news I care about is also in their free Amherst weekly. I read the online edition until they started charging for it, but not usually the opinion section.
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Do we know yet that this is a trend? They used to publish a regular column by a right-wing loon from Amherst named Isabel Lyman (IIRC) and I thought their syndicated op-eds were from various perspectives. Is it possible this op-ed about the Pope was just the most interesting thing they had submitted that week? And have you noticed anything different about local news coverage? (I know people who work there but haven’t talked to them lately.)
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On the favorable side, there is more progressive media content on radio with WHMP going to Air America. Bill Dwight has a show from 9-10 a.m. that does both local and national issues — I’ve found it to be pretty decent radio.