Atomic City Talk

Is it me, or is today a zero news day in the dead tree daily?

A couple of useless comments from the local party leaders about a national news story that is already getting old, a domestic shooting that apparently has no connection to Oak Ridge, a ground breaking and a new slogan. Is that it?

Daco, you seem shocked!

Haven't you realized that when they left Oak Ridge the left the news behind?

Knox News Sentinel, WATE and WBIR had several stories about our city this past weekend....oh, that's right they report news. Richard and his crew take the weekends off. I'm sure they'll catch up later this week (I wonder what Paris is up to! LOL).

Thank goodness for The Observer!!

I think the slogan should be "Oak Ridge: Where smart things used to happen."

Some days, no news is good news.

Yeah, I'm not into that "unlock the secrets of the atomic city" garbage at all...
I like "Oak Ridge: Don't Eat The Catfish!"

And don't hit the antelope-sized Groundhogs! You'll bust a "tar"!

And here it is the 10th of July and Espisito has something to say about the fireworks (lack of and the fiasco) on the 4th.... At least they gave a few tidbits of information from the meeting last night.

Imagine that.

This is nothing new. For quite some time now, the Oak Ridger has been publishing "news" when they get around to it, not when it is "brand new."

Typically, the day after a big event or a public meeting that was attended by a reporter, there will be one front-page story about the event or about one hot item from the meeting. Additional stories (or photos) from the event or meeting will trickle into the paper over the next week, usually without a clear indication of when the news actually happened.

This balances the workload at the newspaper, which is chronically short-staffed. And as long as most people have no information source other than the newspaper, few people complain that the paper is printing old news. (I figure that old news is much better than not reporting these items at all!)

Then I guess my question is why in the world do they continue to print a newspaper five days per week? Given the staffing problems that you mentioned, and a serious lack of a sense of urgency, seems to me that the Oak Ridger should cut back to being a weekly newspaper.
Personally I look forward to the day that the Oak Ridge Observer is both a daily newspaper and the newspaper of record for Oak Ridge. The news printed in the Oak Ridge Observer seems to be just as timely as the Oak Ridger, and they only print once a week.

The Oak Ridger is no longer my hometown's newspaper.

Which I believe is the main complaint here and I'm glad that you seem to agree with the issue.

Old news.

I was thought that is better known as "history". It seems appropriate for the direction that they have chosen.