Recently, the Courant reported that both Mad Dawg’s and Room 960 have been shut down for liquor license violations (i.e. serving minors and not having a license, respectively), but it seems they have stripped their website of all evidence that this article was ever published. It’s enough to make one wonder if this story was real, or just some shady, splotchy pseudo memory accompanying a bad hangover. Neither of the two bars have any mention of an hour change or temporary closing on their websites.
This demands the question of why.
Was the story incorrect or inaccurate? If so, providing corrections would have been more helpful and professional than simply removing the information from the newspaper’s online presence, as if pretending like it never happened would resolve the situation. I understand the practice of removing older publications, but when something is still fresh news, it seems more logical to update the information. Having just checked, I do not see any reference to the article in the Corrections section of the site.
Certain stories on the newspaper’s site allow comments and others do not. Sometimes, an article begins one way and is later changed. Do articles disappear for the same reason — pressure?
If anyone at the Courant has an answer regarding why entire stories disappear from their site, I would love to hear from them.
Yesterday, WNPR featured a show on “urban biking.” If you missed it, follow the link for the podcast. It featured some folks from the Beat Bike Blog, as well as a bike messenger and bike shop owners.
There’s a best blog category again. Last year, I believe the blog voted best was not a local one. No matter who wins, nothing would make me happier than to see locals voting for locals…and there are plenty of local blogs. There’s no need to select a NY or Boston-based blog when we have many excellent ones right here in Connecticut. Just check the blogroll.
My real agenda, though, is to get people to vote for Maria Rodriguez in the category of Best Local Hero. She is the crossing guard who, while pushing two children to safety, was struck by a car. Maria received bruises, but the children who attend the Noah Webster school in the West End were not harmed. I can think of no one more deserving than Maria to win Best Local Hero this year.
There’s no category for best sangria or best mojito. You can vote for those here in the comments.
The online Hartford Courant published a wacky news item that at first I thought had to be part of an April Fool’s edition:
Keney Park Bust Nets 35 Summonses, 4 Pounds Of Pot
12:01 p.m. EST, November 3, 2009
HARTFORD — - Halloween night, officers with the Hartford police northeast conditions unit shagged trespassers at Keney Park. They issued 35 summons to people or being in the park after it was closed.
In the process, they seized 4.1 pounds of marijuana that had been stashed in places on the cricket field at the park, said Sgt. Christene Mertes, a police spokeswoman. The marijuana was hidden and would be retrieved by sellers for people buying it, Mertes said.
“We do get a lot of complaints about that area,” Mertes said, referring to the Tower Avenue/Barbour Street side of the park. “It’s a big area to patrol. They went in and hit it.”
— David Owens
For fun, count the typos. For extra fun, think about how it is possible that someone might have never heard of the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
WFSB recently referred to a brawl between six women as a cat fight. The title of the piece: ”
Police: Karaoke Argument Lead To Cat Fight.”
Of course, the weakening of standards for newspapers and television news is simply not news. Just today on the front page of the Courant site, the “newspaper” posted an advertisement posing as a news article.
We all are familiar with the disappearance and tragic murder of the Yale student.
Unless you read the Hartford Police Department website or somehow caught a brief mention of it at WTNH, you might not have known that a young Hartford teen went missing recently. The HPD announcement says that the girl was “missing from the Gray Lodge Facility since last week” in their September 11th press release. The 15 year old garnered no media attention (at least nothing that is searchable on their web sites, which publish most news items) from the Hartford Courant, WFSB, NBC30, or the Journal Inquirer. A broader search on Google showed the same. Only WTNH bothered. One can only speculate as to why the media can afford to devote constant coverage to one missing persons case, but not to another, especially one involving a youth. Fortunately, the HPD reported yesterday that this girl was safely returned to the Gray Lodge. Thank you to the Hartford Police Department and WTNH for giving a damn about our city’s teenagers.
Last year, when the Courant started trying to join the world of new media, they asked if they could print items from my blog. I told them absolutely not. In general, I don’t have a high opinion of the paper. In specific, they did not offer me any cash. I write this blog out of love and love for the community, and if I’m not going to profit off of that, ain’t no way “America’s oldest continuously published newspaper” is going to profit either. Seeing how they have been recently using information from other news outlets without giving proper credit, I can say that I made the right choice. Here’s is their apology:
The Hartford Courant is America’s oldest continuously published newspaper. We’ve been in business for 245 years. We’ve earned a reputation for integrity and we take it very seriously. Throughout our history we have served the community by highlighting wrongdoing and violations of ethics when we find them. It is only right that we focus the same light on ourselves when we are wrong.
So, it’s incumbent upon me as publisher to tell you that we failed to meet our own standards and, as we would with anyone else, we are flagging it, calling it wrong and taking action.
In short, after an extensive internal review, we have determined that over the last several weeks The Courant plagiarized the work of some of our competitors. This was not our intent, but it is in fact what happened. We are taking corrective action to prevent it from happening again. We have also disciplined the individuals involved.
There is nothing more sacred to a newspaper than its credibility. It is my responsibility to point out our ethical violations and tell you that this newspaper’s staff and I are deeply sorry. We apologize to our readers, competitors and advertisers.
The Courant wants to assure its readers and news staff that we vigorously subscribe to strict journalistic ethics and to maintaining and achieving lasting credibility. We know that there is nothing more important to a newspaper.
Richard J. Graziano
CEO, President & Publisher, Hartford Courant
Senior Vice President Tribune Broadcasting
General Manager WTIC/WTXX
When my friend David told me he’d secured a reservation for a trip to the top of the Travelers’ Tower, I had no choice but to invite myself along. This would bring me downtown in the late morning, and since I had plans to be less than a block from there later in the afternoon, I figured I would just spend the time in between downtown.
At eleven we zoomed to the 21st floor. I did not think about the logistics of this. After having walked 2.5 miles to get downtown, the three flights of stairs did not seem so fun. The view was worth the panting. From the street, the tower does not look like it can hold more than two people. We had six people up there, and there was plenty of room for more. I had no luck locating my apartment.
Yesterday part of downtown was blocked to traffic due to a hostage situation which was reported on by the Hartford Courant. Today, the Mayor and Chief of Police have sent a letter to the newspaper’s publisher expressing their “concern” about the media outlet’s poor judgment:
Dear Mr. Graziano:
We are contacting you to express our deep concern about the decision of The Hartford Courant to ignore the request of law enforcement authorities yesterday to temporarily remove from the Courant website a story about the hostage standoff in South Windsor. As you know, Richard Shenkman the alleged kidnapper, was in an armed standoff with multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Hartford Police, at his home in South Windsor when he informed law enforcement officials he intended to detonate explosives if the Courant did not remove a story concerning the hostage situation from its website by 2:30 p.m. The Hartford Police, South Windsor Police and the Hartford Mayor’s Office contacted Courant officials requesting that the story be removed prior to 2:30 p.m. Contrary to the story reported in today’s Courant, the paper’s staff did not say they could not take the story down due to technical issues, they said they would not take the story down as other news outlets were reporting on the incident and it would set a precedent. Continue reading 'Mayor and Chief of Police Not Having It'»
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