Click the above to read the Jack Bourbon columns.

UPDATE

The archival material is located in files which are "locked" due to an Earthlink glitch, therefore the links from them may lead to dead ends. We recommend that you open these files in a new window, then close out that window if you reach a dead end file.

State of the news

Consider this ...

The only state-wide source of news in New Hampshire is a rabidly conservative relict of the Hearst yellow journalism days when newspapers were willing to start shooting wars just to boost circulation. As a result, outsiders often view New Hampshire citizens as sanctimoneously narrow-minded boobies who hold the most regressive of opinions. New Hampshire deserves better representation from the press.

Consider this ...

Merger mania has turned once-independent voices into homogenized parrots for media moguls like Rupert Murdock and Sumner Redstone or for corporate public relations departments. The Boston Globe is now owned by people in New York. The Los Angeles Times is owned by people in Chicago. The hometown, independent newspaper is becoming an endangered species. What will the effect of this consolidation be? Will MS/NBC criticize Bill Gates as a latter-day robber baron? Will Disney/ABC report on malfeasance by Mickey Mouse? Don't count on it! For example, recently CBS Radio reported that a San Francisco publisher offered to "horse-trade" favorable coverage for the mayor for support for a media deal. Horse-trade? Is CBS afraid of the word bribe? Or is CBS afraid of the Hearst Corporation. Or is it that they are all foxes in the chicken coop together? An independent news source should not be afraid to call a spade a spade and a bribe a bribe.

Consider this ...

It appears to me that the quality of newspapers has been going down. For example, twenty years ago The Lewiston Sun was an excellent small-city newspaper, featuring world, national, and local news. Now, its world coverage is dismal and its national reportage is anemic at best. Almost all newspapers have reduced hard news coverage in favor of "features" and infomercial types of stories. Alas, information myopia pervades the news business.

Consider this ...

Condensation and exclusion is not just confined to print publications. The National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio opposes the creation of low-power community-based FM radio stations. Two categories of radio stations were envisioned. Stations of 10 watts or less would reach an radius of a mile or two, while those with 100 watts or less would reach about a three and a half mile radius. Such stations would serve small areas and specialized groups such as inner-city minority communities. In the past, radio stations such as Free Radio Berkeley were run as "Pirate radio," and often espoused liberal points of view. The Federal Communications Commission has been very aggressive about shutting down "pirate" stations. The proposal to allow the "pirates" to become legitimate has brought fierce opposition from owners of both commercial and "public" radio stations. Do the airwaves belong to the people, or do they belong to whomever has a few million dollars to set up a high-powered radio?

Consider this ...

The cost of newsprint, presses, and all the accouterments associated with the traditional newspaper will continue to rise, making "on-paper" publications increasingly expensive to produce. Expensive editorial coverage will have to be further reduced in favor of revenue-producing advertisements. However, kids who used the Internet since kindergarten will, as adults, not read "adpapers." They'll get their news from on-line sources. If on-line news is merely a mirror of the reduced print/broadcast news (almost all present on-line newspapers are just abridged versions of their on-paper parents,) then our young readers might just say, "Why bother?"

As a result ...

Control of the news is falling into fewer and fewer hands, and those hands are presenting narrower and narrower points of view. Citizens of New Hampshire and of the country as a whole are becoming daily less well-informed as a result of all of this media consolidation. Do we want all our news to come from Time/Warner/AOL/Microsoft/Dow Jones/et al., Incorporated? Diversity of opinion is something that is required to keep democracy healthy, but how can this be accomplished in the face of merger mania?

Here at newsNH ...

We propose to build that diversity from the ground up. A. J. Liebling once said, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Okay, we're handing out printing presses. These are modern printing presses, the kind that put down type with the click of a mouse, not hot lead. We won't need to cut down forests for paper, or buy ink by the barrel. We won't need warehouses, or delivery trucks, or corner newsstands to make this Internet newspaper available, and you'll be able to get it anywhere on the planet. If you are in Los Angeles, or Paris, or Tokyo and you want to know what is happening in Pittsburg, or Hinsdale, or Rye, just click on newsNH to find out. Plus, NewsNH will have a great variety of opinions and news sources because it will be composed of numerous independendent weekly town newspapers, each serving its own community and serving the state as a whole.

How this works ...

On the left you will find a list of the New Hampshire towns with newsNH-associated Internet newspapers. Just click on the town you want to read about and the current issue of that newspaper will appear, either here in this frame, or in a separate window. Each newspaper has editorial independence from newsNH and is under the control of its own publisher/editor. We at newsNH do not influence the content of the town newspapers, but we do offer technical and formatting assistance to the editors so that we don't have a confusing jumble of different styles. Furthermore, we can't edit the contents because the data files are actually located on the editor's local Internet server, not on newsNH's computers. This preserves the independence of each town newspaper.

Privacy issues ...

Unlike most Internet sites, newsNH is not monitoring the reader's computer activity. We are not capturing the reader's browser history; we are not checking to identify the reader; we are not sending cookies to the reader's computer. The only marker we use is a counter which merely records the number of visits to this site. This is a bit disadvantageous to us. We can't tell our advertisers that Reader Joe Smith came to us from www.hotgirls.com after buying herbal remedy books at www.amazon.com. If a reader sends us e-mail, or fills in an on-line form, that information will only be used to answer the reader's question or process his or her request. This information will not be made available to others. True, this is not the way that Internet businesses are normally run, but we're trying to do something different here. We're bringing back intregrity.

Join newsNH ...

To start an Internet newspaper in your town, return to the top of this page and click on the "Editors wanted" box.

John Galuszka

Editor in chief

www.newsNH.com

Start date: Oct. 17, 2001 -- Last revised: 1/29/04