D & C facebook page, 4/28/16 [provided by Michael Nighan]
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A New Low for the D&C
Back in 2012, ostensibly to fund upgrades to their online presence, the Powers That Be at the D&C jacked up their print edition subscription rates by an incredible 33%.
Michael Nighan
Apparently one of those “upgrades” was the transformation of the captions that appeared on the paper’s Facebook page from something which helped to encapsulate what the story was about, to short, cutesy(and assumedly intended to be humorous) journalistic sound bites. (That many such captions have contained misspellings, typos and other examples of poor editing is accepted as business as usual at the D&C.) But this morning (April 28), whoever on the staff writes and edits the Facebook captions sank to a new low.
Above the article, “Man convicted of killing grandmother,” which described the jury verdict in the trial of Donkish Lesane, the man accused of beating his grandmother to death and then setting her house on fire, the D&C staffer(s), tone deaf to any consideration of good taste or journalistic professionalism, tried to be funny by appending the caption, “He’s not invited to Mother’s Day”!
This unimaginably tacky line was subsequently withdrawn, without comment or apology. But not before a snapshot of the offensive comment (attached) were posted by outraged members of the public.
That the D&C Facebook page has been slowly sinking in a sea of trivialities and fluff, poorly-disguised as “news”, is undeniable. But a misjudgment of this magnitude demands that heads roll and that their senior management, from Publisher Michael Kane to VP Karen Magnuson to Senior “Engagement” Editor Julie Philipp take a long, hard look at the direction that they’ve set for this once proud newspaper.
Michael Nighan
