No Uncertainty Here

On Sunday I headed down to the Harvest Market to pick up some earrings from Handmade Jewelry by Alison Vopni. Alison had a booth at the previous week’s Arts & Crafts Festival and when she saw that I was admiring some of the earrings that she makes but there were none for non-pierced ears (my pierced ears ripped years ago) she said she would convert some for me. Lucky for me, she is at the Harvest Market every week so it made it easy for me to pick up the jewelry.

While I was down there, I had the chance to catch up with Ken Grayson of Grayson’s Tune Town. Ken and his family have been a staple in the area for years (his dad was big band leader Val Grayson) and Ken is active on the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. board of directors.

We chatted about business in general – his and mine – and what the future holds for us. Of course, the topic of the Internet came up. Not surprisingly, I advocated for the importance of the traditional, hold-in-your-hands newspaper. Though we both agreed that the “big newspapers” seem to be having an identity crisis, hyper-local papers like Crescenta Valley Weekly know exactly who our audience is and what our readers are interested in. After all, where else can you can read about the local Montrose Search & Rescue team climbing Mt. Hood to raise funds to fight cancer or learn the position of locals on everything from high speed rail to a diagonal crosswalk?

Another important point is that when incorrect information is printed in the newspaper and 32,000 people read it, it is safe to assume that 32,000 people will read the correction in the following edition. The same cannot be said for content on the Internet. After all, how many times have you revisited an article online that you’ve already read? Not too often. Yet that’s where the correction would be.

And regarding the content on the Internet – where exactly does it come from? I’m not talking about news articles that have been posted online by a source like the Los Angeles Times or Daily News, but those “news items” that are thrown out there without any type of verification or investigation. For example, I belong to a service called Next Door in which neighbors can offer items for sale or give a referral for a service. This is usually really helpful. But recently residents have begun posting about burglaries that are allegedly happening in the area. It has frightened neighbors and caused alarm. Here at the CV Weekly, we thought we were missing something when one woman called in that she heard that there were 50 burglaries in the area! We didn’t know anything about it – because it was false. It was something she had read “somewhere.” Also, non-journalistic sites often post information about the crime scene that the police do not want known to the general public. I’m sure the last thing these folks who feel they are doing a community service want is to hinder an investigation.

Finally, advertisers who invest their dollars in the newspaper (especially the CV Weekly) are putting their information in the hands of readers who eagerly receive the paper every week. Isn’t that a better option than hoping that your business is found by someone nosing around the Internet?

  robin goldsworthy