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MONDAY February 23, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels December 18, 2003 The Tidings is not a worthy paper If it looks like a newspaper, it costs like a newspaper, and it has big color pictures on the front, is it a local newspaper? Does moving everything around to further confuse and bewilder readers, changing type, and font, and offering nationally syndicated editorial writers make it a local newspaper? The Tidings flounders, as usual, promising everything and delivering little except Bill O'Reilly to our community door - not that he isn't funny. No matter how you make it different on the outside, this paper remains a franchise paper owned by a big, far-off corporation represented in Medford, inside. Ashlander's know the difference. It's like giving the local McDonald's a Shakespeare decor and calling it an Ashland restaurant. If the Medford paper wants to kill circulation so Ashlanders will take the Medford paper, it isn't going to happen. Stop insulting your readers intelligence with promises. We know the difference between content and format. Tell the corporate shareholders who own the Tidings that newspapers are part of the public trust, and should not be run like investments. We wish them well financially, but not at the cost of a free press. We can't remain a real town without a local paper. The corporate media babble that kills thought, kills communities too. There is no freedom without a free press. A free press stimulates rather than stifles opinion. A free press alerts and offends all readers on a regular basis. A free press invites controversy by representing all sides equally. A free press is the talk of, not the embarrassment of, the town. A free press is what all wars have been fought for. We wouldn't allow corporations to take over our places of worship, but we've allowed them to take over our newspapers. We've sold the essence of democracy out. Only the local rag unites us. A free press, right or left, makes us all a part of life as no race, religion, or politics could. America is the multicolored town hall meeting, but we sold the property to a developer who decides what will be discussed. We remain deeply human in our need for information, opinions, ideas, nothing shapes our mutual destiny more. It used to be that in a free world you could choose the kind of newspaper you wanted and journalism was for principal not profit. Democracy is on the brink and the owner-publishers needs to return papers to readers before advertisers. IF not here, where? If not now, when? If not for liberty, justice, and freedom for all, why? A free press is sacrosanct, sacred, scarce, but we can't live without it. Pay employees enough to stay and give editors enough support to be audacious. Publishers, if you really want to increase circulation, than give us more matter and less art. Leah Ireland Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: A new improved archive search is coming! Look for it in mid-February! .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - ODOT Road Cams