Scran'en Hacks Eyeing Pocono Record

Hey, both reliable readers of this space know that I am loathe to criticize the newspapers ham-handedly run by a certain Scran'en family of non-journalist hacks. Now, with the Murdoch deal looming, there's a little local problem on the old horizon that needs some attention.

Murdoch is quoted as saying he'd like to kill off the New York Times. After his Wall Street Journal deal closes, the betting is that Murdoch will start slicing off some of the lesser-known properties in the Dow Jones stable. That includes the Pocono Record, which, it is widely anticipated, will go up on the block.

Those hacks in Scran'en have already set their sights on the Record.

Not too long ago, they hosted a "future of the Poconos" round table of sorts, which was a thinly-disguised attempt at market research. They Scran'en folk were too clumsy to hide their real intentions (even from some of the equally obtuse political types they brought into the discussions).

So the problem, kids, the real sadness here, is the dismantling of the Pocono Record as a real newspaper. That process was begun in-house when Dow Jones began cutting financial support for the paper to the bone, then it brought in a non-journalist advertising salesman as a neophyte publisher a couple of years ago, and finally they lost one the best editors that little paper has seen late last year. Now, it appears, if the non-journalist family of incompetents in Scran'en have their way, they will buy the paper and bury all hopes of news-hungry folk in Eastern and NEPA.

Then, the good people in the Poconos region will join the hapless saps in Scran'en, Wilkes Berry, and Hazleton (where the hacks at the pretend newspaper also own the papers) and be left without a reliable, professional, or ethical newspaper.