Self Promotion

I noticed the DNT had a nice little picture of half a dozen employees posing with various first prize awards for journalism on Page 2 today. An accompanying story mentioned that one was for “self promotion.”

On the back page of the first section was a map I was very interested in showing the anticipated landfall of the Typhoon Yasi onto the coast of Australia. It was surrounded appropriately by the continuation of a story from the front page called “storm.” I hadn’t recalled seeing anything about Australia on the front page. Unfortunately it turned out to be the story about the “snow” storm pummeling the central US!

A paper didn’t arrive at my door until about 7:30 this morning but instead of it being the Trib I found a Minneapolis Tribune on my doorstep. I found the old “circulation” phone number and called in to get the DNT. Evidently one of the cost saving moves the DNT has taken in recent months is to replace humans in the Circulation Dept with an automatic phone system. I had to press the number one about eight times followed by my phone number and address to report the missing paper. It dutifully arrived within about fifteen minutes my never once having to talk to a person. Now if the DNT could just rely on machines for all their proof reading – machines that can tell the difference between a map of an Australian typhoon and a North American blizzard.

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