My gripe with the Jamestown Post-Journal

Senator Hillary Clinton
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

JAMESTOWN, New York - While ruminating about this website (and thinking about what my next posting might be) I went to the Jamestown Post-Journal website and ran across the following teaser:

Senator Visits Cummins Plant
To Mark 750,000th Engine

LAKEWOOD - Sen. Hillary Clinton leaned over a massive engine in the middle of a stuffy Cummins Inc. plant, signing her name next to nearly 1,000 others sprawled across the glossy red metal.

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Now I know that some of the members of the Class of '66, their spouses, maybe even their children, work at Cummins, so I clicked for details and got the obnoxious "You Must Subscribe" window that so infuriates me when I see it on any newspaper website that I usually write a detailed letter (on real paper even) to the newspaper in question to explain some facts of life about the Internet and why charging for these kinds of stories is, well, nothing short of bullshit.

Yes, I know. The Wall Street Journal does it. But the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times don't.

Neither should the P-J. It's Bush-league bull... (and that's not a reference to the President, unless you want to take it that way).

Then I went in search of a photo of Sen. Clinton to run with this entry and found her official photo, along with tons of others. (When you are thinking about a presidential bid, you better have a hot web site. She does.)

This picture (the one in which her facial expression makes it look like its really a picture of her wax likeness at Madame Tussaud's Museum) is her official Senatorial photo. As in, this is the best she is ever going to look.

I've fired photographers for better shots than the one I have posted here. Her official photo. Kee-rist!

But I digress.

I reluctantly realize that the Jamestown Post-Journal is probably the only source of certain kinds of information about members of the Class of '66. So, for those of you who do have online subscriptions, if you run across any news of our classmates - and think it should be posted - email them in my direction.

In the meantime, I'm going to draft a letter to the publisher of the P-J (James Austin, - jcaustin@post-journal.com) to offer some advice about the economics of web publishing and suggest that he give the Class of '66 a free subscription.

Maybe a lot of free subscriptions.