Talk:Concord Monitor

Gay or lesbian personals

Concord New Hampshire has a significant gay and lesbian population. A few years ago I became curious why the Concord Monitor's personal pages only carried ads for: "men seeking women" and "women seeking men".

I asked a reporter at the Monitor, and was told it was the policy of the paper not to print ads for gay or lesbian’s personals. I was told it was a decision of the publisher. -- dolceedallineare 66.155.209.123 00:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Reporters' knowledge of advertising policies are suspect, at best (as I well know, being a small-newspaper reporter for decades), so that's not much citation. Further, the lack of "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" personals is almost universal among general newspapers in this country; it's not notable for this particular paper, any more than is the lack of, say, pagan listings on the religion page. - DavidWBrooks 16:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The presence of “same sex” personals in New England newspapers is quite common-The Globe, The Phoenix, The Burlington Free Press for example. The Monitor editorially defends gay rights. Is there a legitimate reason to deny them inclusion in the personal section? Perhaps active blogger Mike Pride will settle the question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dolceedallineare (talk • contribs) 22:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Those are all much larger newspapers serving cities - even Burlington is a good chunk bigger than Concord. The union-leader, Telegraph, Foster's and (I believe) Portsmouth Herald lack them. Again, while this is an excellent topic for debate in many forums, AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (or at least an attempt at one) is not the place for it. I won't remove it again, though - let's see what others think. (By the way, does the Monitor even collect its own personals, or does it buy them from a service, as most small newspapers do?) - DavidWBrooks 22:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

They do appear to own/run the operation themselves. I've added a comment that same-sex personals are available on the online version. I still think the entire paragraph should be removed. - DavidWBrooks 00:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Size of distibution doesn’t matter, and the absence of same sex-personals from every other NH paper argues for their inclusion with the espoused values of The Monitor. However, I do agree that the paragraph may be of more relevance to a discussion forum than an encyclopedia entry. I’ve emailed Mike Pride to see if he would care to comment.Dolceedallineare 03:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the same-sex personal issue is worthy of note in an article as short as this one.--ColForbin 01:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps not, but would you feel the same way if it was a racial issue? dolceedallineare@yahoo.com 9 July 2006

Denying racial ads would be illegal and therefore worthy of comment in an encyclopedia. Perhaps not having same-sex personals should be illegal, too, but it's not. We're not here to present the world as we think it should be, but as it is. There are plenty of Web sites where this situation can be debated and lamented. - DavidWBrooks 14:52, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The Monitor simultaneously condemns and commits acts of bias against a segment of society. Perhaps it has legitimate reason, but legal or not, it is a fact of the paper's character and should be noted. “Allegations of Bias” occupies more than a page of the Wikipedia New York Times entry.--Dolceedallineare 23:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I took it out again after a couple of days, because it continues to look like an out-of-place, single-issue debating point rather than an encyclopedia item - I put "gay rights" in the subject line to attract interest. See if any others join the talk.

Another alternative might be to put the same sentence into the article about every newspaper in the country that doesn't print same-sex personals, which is most of them, for better or worse. - DavidWBrooks 22:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Citations

Does anyone have a link to Time calling it one of America's best newspapers because there are no citations and besides the article needing them I would just like to read Time's article about the monitor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.205.113 (talk) 15:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)