Cutting the DNT a little slack

In some ways the Trib has suffered in much the same way as the Post Red Plan Duluth School District from problems outside its control.

1. The Trib’s subscription base – elderly readers – has diminished.
2. At the same time avid young newsreaders can access the Trib’s content in a subscription free, online version.
3. Always owned by investors outside of Duluth the lastest owners have been cost conscious and editorially tone deaf. Their publishers threw themselves into the Chamber of Commerce which acts as something of a business fraternity. That fraternity fell head over heals for Supt Keith Dixon and the Trib Publishers went along for the ride.
4. The Trib has had to make draconian staff cuts eliminating a class of journalists with deep roots in Duluth and knowledge about the community.
5. The current Editorial Board inherited the previous Board’s pro Red Plan prejudice and is loath to discredit their predecessors because the public doesn’t really think of a newspaper as an entity that changes its position. The “King is dead, long live the King” is a phrase that seems apt.
6. Most importantly the push for the Red Plan is genuinely motivated by the desire to improve our community and our schools. Of course, we got into the Vietnam War to make the world a better place.

Here ends my exculpation of the Trib. The DNT is a newspaper God Dammit. They have earned my contempt and every lost subscription over the past four years.

As for their editorial policy on the Red Plan you can catch up with my thinking about that starting here.

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