Sunday, October 1, 2006

Would-Be Media Mogul Frustrated In Attempt To Buy Second Paper Having successfully bought the Knoxville News Sentinel last weekend, I headed out on Sunday to buy The New York Times... and where better to look for one than downtown Knoxville, where Adolph Ochs began his newspaper career delivering the Chronicle (and sweeping up) -- before going on to buy the Times and gradually make it the nation's leading broadsheet. Verdict: I guess downtown wasn't the best place to look after all. On my first visit to Knoxville, three years ago this month, I'd stayed at the Hilton (like many visitors, some who document their trip with better pictures than I do) and noticed a Times vending machine across the street. So that's where my quest to buy one began this morning. Alas, USA Today was the only out-of-town coin box. A Hilton bellhop suggested trying the gift-shop inside the lobby. Nope. Just a stack of News Sentinels. From outside, I had noticed that a Starbucks has latched onto the side of the building, but a front-desk clerk said I wouldn't find the Times there, either. On to Market Square, where Ochs's career began. (I know that because I read it in a Boston Globe travel feature a month before that first visit to Knoxville. The Globe knew whom to ask: Jack Neely, author of the city's Secret History, serialized in the Metro Pulse.) Alas again, plenty of Metro Pulse and News Sentinel boxes surrounded Market Square, but that was it. I strolled for several blocks down Gay Street and back. The Downtown Grind coffee shop had a Times on the table the last time I stopped in; this time there were some Cynthia Markert prints that I hadn't seen before, but that was as urbane as my city stroll got. (OK, full disclosure: Cynthia's my next-door neighbor. But I really thought I'd find a paper there.) I circled back to Market Square for brunch at Tomato Head, where I looked around for a second-hand Times. "I should have brought mine," a helpful waitress said. "Where did you get it?" I asked, hopefully. Home delivery, she said, in West Knoxville. (I told her that the last time I checked, there was no such delivery in my neighborhood, a WestKnoxCentricity similar to my problem finding a periodontist east of Bearden. She suggested I try again for a subscription. But I digress.) The helpful waitress offered to get me a Hellbender Press instead. In her secret identity, it turns out, she's a journalism grad student and an editor of that paper. I'm all for the environment, but I wanted a big, hefty (but recyclable) Sunday newspaper. Luckily, Tomato Head had WiFi, so I did get a start on reading the Times -- on my Palm TX. A couple of articles looked like they might fit my online journalism class's upcoming discussion of formatting stories for different size screens, so after breakfast I resumed my quest for an ink-on-paper edition. In Boston, I had pointed out to students that a hotel near their dorm even sold the International Herald Tribune. So, despite my experience at the Hilton, I decided to try one more hotel, the Holiday Inn over by World's Fair Park. No, the clerk said, no Times. No Tennessean. No Journal-Constitution. No Commercial Appeal. I passed up the Knoxville Journal in the box outside, looking for something more exotic, and gave up on downtown. All along, I'd known that a little more walking would get me a Times, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a Tennessean, or all three -- as well as a six-pack of beer and a few snacks. So I headed across World's Fair Park, up the hill to Fort Sanders and James Agee Street... home of literary memories -- and Sam's Party Store. I settled for the Times and Tennessean. The Atlanta paper wouldn't have fit in my bag, and I wouldn't have time to read it anyway. (In fact, when I got home, I double-checked online and discovered that the Times now is offering home delivery in my neighborhood. I also discovered that I'd forgotten all about a Saturday night blogger get-together where I could have asked veteran Knoxville readers about Sunday paper sources.) Anyhow, it was all worth the trip. I'd needed the exercise. I'll probably make my class presentation of print-versus-online story treatments with the links below, and I'm pretty sure none of the students will read this far into the blog to find the links ahead of time, which will help me make a point about the importance of brevity when writing for the Web. Heh. A Times page that uses three colors and a half-dozen sizes of donkeys to illustrate the overlapping segments of the Democratic party, and the Flash attempt to tell the same story online: A Guide to The Political Herds. (Look for U.S. Rep. Harold Ford in the "blue dog bloc.") A one-third of a page color illustration by David G. Klein, accompanying a Richard Siklos essay headlined "How Did Newspapers Land In This Mess?" A Tennessean article about Vanderbilt University's Constance Gee, in part to see if the students would handle it differently online. 7:17:41 PM    comment []

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