Too Cheap to Fly to Europe
The Providence Journal 's Jack Coleman reports on a controversy about the proposed Cape Cod Wind Farm, found on poynter.org today.
"NEVER LET IT BE SAID that The Cape Cod Times is stingy. Unlike many newspapers its size, the 50,000-circulation Times has sent reporters to chase stories in South Africa, Belgium, Brazil and other distant locales.
Cape Cod's only daily is viewed as a cash cow in the Ottaway chain, a subsidiary of Dow Jones. Yet The Times turns downright miserly in covering the biggest local issue in decades -- one that commands more attention in its pages than any other: Cape Wind, the offshore wind-energy project proposed for Nantucket Sound.
If approved, Cape Wind's 130 turbines would form the country's first offshore wind farm -- as well as the largest local construction project since the Cape Cod Canal, of 1910-14.
While wind towers have yet to appear in American waters, they've sprouted in the waters of Denmark, Germany, Britain and Ireland. Given The Times's deep pockets and abiding interest in the Nantucket Sound proposal, you'd think the paper would send a reporter to Europe to find out what the locals there think of offshore wind energy.
Yet The Times's editor in chief, Cliff Schechtman, won't send his reporters anywhere that they might find people who overcame their initial opposition to windmills off their coasts.
Schechtman declined to comment on the story.
"NEVER LET IT BE SAID that The Cape Cod Times is stingy. Unlike many newspapers its size, the 50,000-circulation Times has sent reporters to chase stories in South Africa, Belgium, Brazil and other distant locales.
Cape Cod's only daily is viewed as a cash cow in the Ottaway chain, a subsidiary of Dow Jones. Yet The Times turns downright miserly in covering the biggest local issue in decades -- one that commands more attention in its pages than any other: Cape Wind, the offshore wind-energy project proposed for Nantucket Sound.
If approved, Cape Wind's 130 turbines would form the country's first offshore wind farm -- as well as the largest local construction project since the Cape Cod Canal, of 1910-14.
While wind towers have yet to appear in American waters, they've sprouted in the waters of Denmark, Germany, Britain and Ireland. Given The Times's deep pockets and abiding interest in the Nantucket Sound proposal, you'd think the paper would send a reporter to Europe to find out what the locals there think of offshore wind energy.
Yet The Times's editor in chief, Cliff Schechtman, won't send his reporters anywhere that they might find people who overcame their initial opposition to windmills off their coasts.
Schechtman declined to comment on the story.
posted by Max Hartshorne at 10:46 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home