Greater Reading Online

That iPad app? Forget about it.

The AP has the dirty lowdown:

Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests.

Here is an excerpt from today's hilarity by Dan Kelly, the columnist, who does not want to give the time of day to those dad-blasted bloggers who are gumming up the tried-and-true professions of Journalism and Columnism:

Maybe we could award color-coded press credentials to bloggers based on experience. A red press card would be given to someone who has worked or blogged for less than one year. Orange press cards would be issued for those with two years of experience, yellow for three years and so on.

It's overly simplistic, I know. Experience doesn't necessarily engender competence.

But it's better than nothing. The alternative is to turn press credentials over to folks who traffic unchecked in fictitious drivel. They can write what they want, but let's keep them away from crime scenes.

In my view, we can't have so-called "citizen journalists" - unvetted people who may have axes to grind - running around with press credentials, willing to publish anything that has even a slight ring of truth to it.

To which commenter JT Hobbes commented:

This is really funny, since "any idiot with a laptop" is who is putting newspapers out of business. You guys are dinosaurs, and writing articles like this and not covering local news is what is going to keep the downward spiral going.

The newspaper ran its list of "movers & shakers with Berks ties," this one about business and industry, voted on by a select panel of newspaper people, such as a sports guy, that actually didn't suck up to Albert Boscov, who just signed a giant printing contract with these same newspaper people. My question is, why wasn't Richard A. Fox on the short list? He founded the magnificent Fox Theater chain, which dominated Reading screens from the '60s through the '80s. He was president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, which cribbed its acronym, NATO, from an organization that made for terrific movie thrillers. He was like the guy whose son helped Sandy Solmon create Sweet Streets desserts, when they got unhitched. No respect.