First Posted: 3/9/2015
So much for The Lima News improving.
Oh, we have all grown accustomed to seeing the same article (with the same headline) running in different sections of the paper on the same day … or consecutive days. We can excuse the grammar and sentence structure problems. That, I suppose, is part of the charm of a small-town paper.
Over the years, it has made the newspaper a wonderful supplemental tool for home-school grammar lessons (our version of Newspapers in Education), and it makes for some fun discussions on social media.
My husband isn’t much of a newspaper reader, but he did sit down with the March 4 edition.
“Shop owner wins battle,” proclaimed the front-page headline. He had to ask me what the battle was because the reporter assumed everyone in town knew what was happening in the little Gomer pizza shop.
Then he got to Section B, “Driver training adjusted,” in big, bold type. Although our children are all licensed, this was a grabber — as a headline is meant to be. Nowhere does the article explain HOW driver training will be adjusted by the bill in the statehouse. Perhaps we’ll learn in a few days when the article is reprinted.
One benefit of having the obituaries on page A2 was that they served as a gentle reminder to the reader not to expect too much; this is a small-town paper. If The Lima News is really interested in making improvements to the paper, it should look at the quality of what is printed on the page.
Or not. We wouldn’t want to lose the entertainment value.
