What do you think about using McClatchy news service as a source?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/

I have always liked them, but just never think about them much. I think they lean a little left of center which is about all we are going to get in this day and age.

What is your opinion of McClatchy?

Don

[KharmaTrain]

1. A Dying Breed...

The company started as a bunch of newspapers out in California and is now the victim of the vanishing of print papers. I've found their coverage over the years to be down the middle...and were especially good with their reporting of the Iraq invasion. The days of a wire service have given way to blogs, websites and tweets...

[leveymg]

2. Better than practically any MSM alternative.

McClatchy was the only major US chain openly and consistently skeptical of the Bush Administration's Iraq WMD claims. Also carried some important stories that laid the Administration's 9/11 claims open to more thorough investigation.

I wish they had a DC Daily paper. I would subscribe, and actually pay for it.

[EFerrari]

3. McClatchy is one of the better ones but you have to be careful

because they own the Miami (we'll print anything) Herald and sometimes you think you're reading a McClatchy story and miss the Miami Herald attribution in small print.

[emulatorloo]

4. I've read some really good reporting from them.

For example, I remember a multi-part series on guantanamo during the Bush era who talked with innocent released prisoners who had gone in as moderates or apolitical. But came out of the experience as radical Bin Laden supports because of their treatment there.

They do good work. As poster above said, a dying breed.

[NV Whino]

5. Top notch

And Mr McClatchy is a neighbor… almost next door as things go in this neck of the woods.

[coalition_unwilling]

6. The only major print chain to call 'bullshit' on Iraq WMD prior to

Operation 'Shocking and Awful'. If McClatchy could call it, then so could have the NYTimes, Gannett, Tribune Corp, ad infinitum.

McClatchy actually practiced journalism prior to March of 2003, rather than sucking the cock of the powers that be.

For those who claim the matter is merely academic, 1,000,000+ dead and wounded Iraqis and 50,000+ dead and wounded American troops would beg to disagree.

[NYC_SKP]

7. Upon reflection, I know if they went away I would mourn the loss.

Which is to say that their existence is critical in this era of media consolidation, but in a perfect world they'd probably not be a favorite.

[Roselma]

8. One of the few outlets left that does investigative

reporting. When they absorbed Knight-Ridder, they also brought on the types of reporters who investigated and called foul on the claims of WMD in Iraq prior to the invasion.

[immoderate]

9. They are the best of the bunch.

They have reporters.

--imm

[liam_laddie]

12. McClatchy's DC bureau has twenty reporters!

Two of the better-known are Jonathan Landay and Nancy Youssef. They did excellent coverage of the deceptions that led to the US' disastrous forays into the Mid-East. I think McClatchy has the most objective staff of any US chain, at least in foreign coverage.

[immoderate]

14. I worked for a group of local newspapers after college.

We used Knight-Ridder News Service back then, and though we only used local news and features from them, their national stories, in dispatches, typically topped other news outlets. Vietnam days.

--imm

[ellenfl]

10. i always read mcclatchy articles, when i find them.

i wish i could get my bf to switch from the palm beach post, which has taken a sharp right turn, to the miami herald but he likes the local in the local paper.

ellen fl

[Blue_Tires]

11. Well, they did absorb one of the best and most respected services

in Knight-Ridder, so I hope that influence rubbed off on them...

[MineralMan]

13. I treat all news services alike.

I look for the news and ignore the commentary. If there isn't straight reporting of what has happened, I can usually suss out what is plain fact and what is biased commentary, regardless of the source.

If I am looking for commentary, I select commentators who have demonstrated their abilities in the past.

These days, getting the news can be difficult and take some work on the consumer's part. Sadly, too few are willing to do that work.