North Shelby Times

The strange story of the little paper that could continues.

I didn't get to it then, which I regret, but two weeks ago the NST carried Bartholomew "Bart" Sullivan's Commercial Appeal write-up of County Mayor AC Wharton's swearing-in ceremony. What's strange is that the story's source was uncredited! I don't know if it was stolen, which seems highly unlikely, or if they got CA permission to reprint, which is probably what they did. But why then didn't they credit the CA? Odd.

The current issue online has the new layout and it's a doozy! Not in a good way either. For whatever reason, the publisher of the NST elected to print the whole thing with Adobe Acrobat, page for page. Each page is a 250+Kb monstrosity that, like all Adobe PDF stuff online, blinks and rescans with each screen action. There's some badly laid-out and designed newspapers online, but this is the strangest one I've encountered so far.

The Page One stories are fun, too. Under the headline "DEMOCRATS UNITE" (Their all-caps, OK?), is a content-free glance at a Clement for Senate function. Writer Frank Holland did find time to comment on the food, though.

And they also have a revealing column from State Senator Steve Cohen about the gambling referendum. Since it's PDF you'll have to read it online, but Cohen once again uses the Georgia HOPE program to justify our getting a lottery. Interestingly, he also quotes a more-than-$300 million figure for revenue from a lottery. As I commented before, the range expected is more like $180 - 300 million. Cohen is inflating figures now. The column is full of stuff that has been refuted already.

Until next time.