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Avid reader is hooked on newspapers

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  • Originally published May 2, 2008 at 5:37 p.m., updated May 2, 2008 at 5:37 p.m.

Perhaps only Vince Reedy will find what I am about to write interesting, but I’ll take that chance since he addressed, for me, a fascinating subject.

He wrote (April 20 Advocate) of lacking an out-of-Victoria daily newspaper, because those from Houston, San Antonio and Austin were losing money by distributing to too-far-away subscribers.

Since you read Vince’s interesting experience without an auxiliary daily journal to his beloved Advocate, I’ll offer my newspaper reading scenario:

I’ve subscribed to the Advocate and the Caller-Times for the past 50-plus years. With Woodsboro being about the exact midway spot between the two cities, I wanted to treat each fairly. Getting this out of the way immediately. My favorite and most respected of the two is now the Advocate. And, yes! The main reason is that the Advocate almost always prints what I write, and the Caller-Times doesn’t.

However, even if it would, I’ll give preference to the Advocate because of its more intelligent approach to news coverage, its superb editing for understanding and for its almost crazed mission of best service possible to its reading area.

As Vince, I miss the large Texas dailies and with one addition. When available, I bought the Chronicle and the Express-News each morning. Also, four or five times a week, I drive to Sinton for the New York Times ($1.25 daily; $5 Sunday) and while there, the Austin American Statesmen (Two of our seven children are UT grads, and I sort of wish the other five were. I’m a University of Missouri graduate but never pushed our children in that direction).

You may recall the only column I had accepted by the Advocate was a piece to “Help Save The New York Times.” This was when that awful guy, Rupert Murdoch, was nearing the purchase of the Wall Street Journal. You all know, by now, Rupert owns the Wall Street Journal as well as scores of Fox-related communicative TV, radio and print venues. Murdoch is not only stronger, he is almost the King Kong of worldwide news and opinion expression. Only the Internet stands (beans?) between Murdoch and a monopolistic advantage that could well persuade political, social and financial changes, that would threaten the very core of freedom as we know it (Note the ironical note at the end of this column).

From the above, you may deduce that I’m nuts about newspapers. I was and am. But, like Vince Reedy, I have only the Advocate, Caller-Times and USA Today. USA Today? Where and how did this paper get into this discussion? Well, a rack outside H-E-B still carries the colorful and really not a bad paper. USA Today is worth the 75 cents I spend a couple a days a week. But, I read it five days. How?

Well with my wife and I eating $666 worth of out-of-house meals monthly, I have an opportunity of dropping into hotels, when the USA Todays are made available to guests. I make myself a two-minute, weekday-non-paying guest, I always ask a clerk for the freebie. Let me digress just a little bit: I made inquiries and found out that the Express News and American Statesmen circulate no farther south than Pleasanton and Stockdale. Reedy probably knows where the Chronicle delivery stops. USA Today is surprisingly liberal, editorially, although apparently neutral politically in news coverage. Now, for the promise of a “note” earlier in the column: Summing up this rather lengthy (and possible useless) information as to how I read my newspaper now, I must confess that I’m helping Murdoch pay the $5 or $6 billion he owes Wall Street Journal previous owners.

Somehow, I got on a mailing list from the Wall Street Journal circulation department, offering six days of the WSJ for 52 weeks for $99. I could hardly believe this and reasoned that Rupert wanted to keep his eye on me, through subtle polling readers’ intent on occasion; and he was worried that my influence through the Victoria Advocate would at least slow down his maniacal drive to become the overload of the entire world’s search for information.

In all fairness, I find the WSJ as fair and informative as the New York Times, which is a great compliment. Of course, editorially, the WSJ is Herbert Hooverish. I’m truly amazed at the depth the WSJ achieves in its various researches that develop into stories. I honestly cannot read the entire daily issue, much because its financial reporting is way over my blue collar intellectually, and I’m not the best at understanding Wall Street “inside information.”

Now, what would you do without all this? Don’t tell me, I don’t need to know.

  

 

 Bill Kennedy is retired and a resident of Woodsboro.



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