First of all how can we take anyone seriously who references Bieber fever in a sports article - for fu** sakes you have to be kidding me (this was like a week or two ago).
Second, the new post standard business model has a very negative built-in incentive to sensationalize and focus on shock value over quality of content. The company has essentially abandoned the subscription model which provides a steady (if slowly declining) stream of revenue that supports a degree of journalistic integrity because people get the opportunity to evaluate your 'product' over the long-term since it automatically arrives on their doorstep every morning regardless of the headline on the front page. Their new model is click dependent. To keep people clicking they need to say controversial things that will invite what can only vaguely be called 'discussion' in the comments section. There is literally no other metric that matters in that business model at least for the short-term. They have the additional problem of only going part way with the transition...so they have the legacy costs of a big newspaper with the printing press, staff, delivery, old reporters who have moved up the salary curve etc - with the revenue model of a blog. Blogs work because they are cheap to run and generally focus on one or two very specific topics. You have one or two content experts and then a bunch of interns working for college credit. But the post standard needs to keep covering local issues, public interest stories etc that cost a lot to do (in terms of staff) and generate very little interest (no clicks). so to compensate they are forced (in their short-sighted opinion) to be inflammatory in the two areas that will generate controversy - sports and politics. In the long-term you will see specialist sites take market share from the post standard because they have no focus and are choosing a click generating strategy that over time alienates the readership base. All it takes is one former sports reporter to open a local sports blog covering area high school sports in depth, one former city councilman to start a local politics site - etc etc. They are doing what they think will allow them to continue to exist...the problem is they are wrong and in the mean time recruits get to read all the garbage posted by the local paper who should theoretically have a vested interest in Cuse not being viewed negatively by recruits and the general public. Dumb dumb dumb. End of rant.
