Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Re-dubbing, Scrubbing

Mike and I have been told that the name of this blog is, well, less than worthy. We take it as a compliment that our snarky little allusion to the ancient weekly newspaper we abandoned, The Lincoln County Snooze News is beneath the pieces we've been posting, and have been tossing around some ideas for another banner. This week even the allusion seems ridiculous when their biggest story--according to their online front page all weekend--the disappearance of a Wiscasset woman Thursday, Nov. 6, was solved on Saturday the 8th. She showed up unharmed at a relative's home early that morning. The LCN posted this "breaking" story two days later on the 10th.

The most misleading part is the LCN scrubbed their wrong-for-three-days story by editing it instead of adding the new news. This violates web protocol, long established by the universities who developed the Internet. Scrubbing the news is at worst Orwellian, at best unprofessional. It uses the web's power for damage control instead of for archiving and organizing.

As for archiving, the web geniuses at the LCN have evaporated nearly five years of reporters' work previously available on the old site's archive search, effectively flouting the opportunity for research and responsible citizenship. This confirms the paper's total misunderstanding of the web.

In an effort to dispense with this allusion to the local paper, which seemed a good joke at one time, we would like a new name. Some have said we could use our video production name, Lacunae. Mike and I like the idea of including an old fashioned newspaper moniker like the Citizen or Herald with an updated modifier.

We'll keep you posted on any keepers. Ideas? Click comments below.

[Updated to edit for snark control at 0925; and again for clarity at 1030.]

1 comment:

Andrea said...

Hmmm..."Sheepscot Valley Observer"..."Ear To The Ground"..."The Lincoln County Clarifier"..."Alna Gazette"..."The Lincoln County Newsworthy"...?

Hey whatever happened to the Lincoln County Weekly out of Damariscotta?