Let me repeat: The Cleveland Plain Dealer has its own wire service. I know, I was shocked, too. Now, I hate to be the ignorant person who sounds like an idiot who had the wrong idea about a place she has never been. Many people do not even know what state my hometown is in (and it's not a tiny village, either).
As I was following Cleveland.com's coverage of the president's yearly address Tuesday, I had to pause for a moment when I first read "Plain Dealer wire service" in the byline of a story.
"Oh yeah, they're really proud of that," one of my friends (an Ohio native) remarked when I admitted my astonishment to her.
I was extremely pleased to find this, particularly given my last, not-so-favorable post about their coverage of the South Carolina Republican Primary election. It makes me wonder why they didn't have more of their own coverage of the primary, but it still makes me happy to see a commitment to good local journalism.
While the site still included many other wires' stories, I saw in my discovery a ray of hope. I had feared that, in a class where I am looking for stories covering a national election, I would find only AP stories on this local news website. "I might as well be following the AP's website," I found myself thinking. I envisioned every blog post to go something along the lines of "they used a lot of wire stories, they were a good variety, they wrote their own editorial." I'm glad that I will have more than one-line blog posts for the next several weeks.
As I was following Cleveland.com's coverage of the president's yearly address Tuesday, I had to pause for a moment when I first read "Plain Dealer wire service" in the byline of a story.
"Oh yeah, they're really proud of that," one of my friends (an Ohio native) remarked when I admitted my astonishment to her.
I was extremely pleased to find this, particularly given my last, not-so-favorable post about their coverage of the South Carolina Republican Primary election. It makes me wonder why they didn't have more of their own coverage of the primary, but it still makes me happy to see a commitment to good local journalism.
While the site still included many other wires' stories, I saw in my discovery a ray of hope. I had feared that, in a class where I am looking for stories covering a national election, I would find only AP stories on this local news website. "I might as well be following the AP's website," I found myself thinking. I envisioned every blog post to go something along the lines of "they used a lot of wire stories, they were a good variety, they wrote their own editorial." I'm glad that I will have more than one-line blog posts for the next several weeks.