There is much that could be said about the Canton Repository’s front-page Sunday editorial about Hall of Fame Village. Here are a few points worth making.
The “national media outlet” criticized in the editorial is The New York Times. It published a story last week about the financing problems that until recently stopped construction of the village.
One of the Canton Repository’s criticisms was that the story lacked new information. It probably didn’t lack new information for the readers of The New York Times. Here’s a guess: The readership of The New York Times in Stark County is a tiny percentage of the readership of The Canton Repository.
The Rep also criticized the Times for a story that was “lacking hope.” Not sure what that means. In simplest terms, news reporting is presenting information. In simplest terms, the “hope” part is the province of the editorial page and the opinion writers.
Even as “The official newspaper of the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” The Canton Repository allows its reporters to write about problems at the village. For the most part, it injects the hope and the boosterism in the editorials. As it should be.
The Rep’s third indictment of the Times is that it lacked credibility by excluding key facts. One cannot know what the reporter left in his notebook, but the Rep’s argument seems to be based on what Stark County Commissioners Bill Smith and Richard Regula should have said or wish they had not said. And some of the editorial’s target shifted from The New York Times to an unidentified radio station.
Judge for yourself. Here’s the Rep’s Sunday front-page editorial:
Here’s the Times story that stirred the Rep’s editorial writer:
Here’s a New York Times story about the village from August 2017 that did not earn a rebuke from The Rep, even though — like last week’s story — it mostly “lacked new information” for careful readers of The Canton Repository’s reporting:
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