Not fit for wrapping fish, says this reader


[COMMENTARY] While spending last week with my family in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (colloquially known as “Yooperland”), enjoying the quiet beaches along the shores of Lake Superior, I had the dubious pleasure of reading the local paper.

In spite of the restful surroundings, I found my blood pressure elevated numerous times by the craptastic content purveyed by The Mining Journal. How Yoopers — the people of Marquette and the rest of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — put up with the Journal’s hackery is beyond me, although I suspect that a confluence of blue-collar locals and Northern Michigan University students may encourage this excuse for journalism. The students likely don’t bother to read the paper, and a majority of the hard-working Yoopers are equally likely to accept what’s on the newsprint they purchase.

Two articles in particular induced shallow, rapid breathing, heated outbursts and coffee spewed over the family’s table.

Continued – The first was little more than an exercise in dictation, an article documenting a speech given by Rio Tinto Copper Group CEO Bret Clayton to two local business organizations about local mining opportunities. Rio Tinto, as you may recall from reading our site, is the owner of Kennecott Eagle Mining Co. Kennecott is prospecting and developing a nickel sulfide mine outside Marquette over the protests of numerous citizen and environmental activist groups. The article contained four paragraphs on the front page of the paper that began, “Clayton said,” while burying any dissent in the last few paragraphs on the last page of Section A. And not one opinion from attendees was obtained — were they in agreement with Clayton or skeptical? Who knows?

The second article was front-paged, above the fold on Saturday’s issue, and focused on Cleveland Cliffs Inc., one of the area’s largest employers. The article discussed the possible acquisition of Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. and the likely hurdles such a deal faced. Who and what is Alpha Natural Resources, a reader might ask, yet nowhere in the nine complete paragraphs on the front page or in the 10 paragraphs on the last page of Section A did the article provide such an explanation. How difficult would it have been to modify the first paragraph in this manner:

Cleveland Cliffs Inc.’s deal to purchase the Appalachian coal-mining firm Alpha Natural Resources Inc. for $10 billion may have hit a snag. [emphasis mine]

Four words — that’s all it would have taken. Was there a shortage of ink that day? I wouldn’t have thought so since the next story below the fold found 17 paragraphs for the local Blueberry Festival. If I were a CCI employee, retiree or community member, I’d certainly want to know more about the risks such a large employer was taking in an acquisition, let alone the acquisition of a firm that does surface mining of coal.

Family members mopping up spewed coffee and overhearing my outbursts of frustration with The Mining Journal encouraged me to write to the editor, as if that might do some good. I suspect not, since the problems with this paper are both in its editing process and in its ownership. Why else did these examples of inept journalism appear in print, except with the blessing of the editors and ultimately its publisher?

The editorial content itself also sheds light on the nature of the individuals to whom I suspect I’d be submitting a toothless complaint. The Mining Journal’s print edition regularly features nationally syndicated columns by dogmatic conservatives like Michelle Malkin and other Heritage Foundation or Townhall.com pundits, with little if any counterbalance. If the editors feel that printing tripe from a woman who wrote apologetics for Japanese internment is lucid content, there’s really little sense in arguing with them.

The last straw was a violation of the Journal’s own policy on letters to the editor, limiting letters to one per submitter every 30 days. Not only did they print a letter from the same Greg Stahlman twice within the week, they printed the exact same letter. The editor of the online edition didn’t catch this either, as you will find Mr. Stahlman’s rant about a New York senator and a bank without branches in the U.P. once under Editorials on July 27 and again under Letters to the Editor on July 24. You can find them both if you look at last Thursday’s and Sunday’s print editions, although I can’t recommend you spend money to do so.

The Mining Journal has affiliates in Iron Mountain, Ludington, Alpena and Houghton, reaching across most of northern Michigan and all of Michigan’s first congressional district. I can only hope that these other affiliates are better than the Marquette paper. It certainly wouldn’t take much effort.

There’s an upside to reading the Journal and disrupting my otherwise peaceful getaway in Yooperland, though; the paper reminded me why Michigan Messenger and other alternative media are very much needed here in Michigan.