desitheamazing: @maddieeohh aha i am bringing money so we could order food or walk to cvs
about 30 minutes agodesitheamazing: haha i am bringing money so we could order food or walk to cvs
about 30 minutes ago
felonice: Pick up the new copy of Treasure Coast Parenting (at the front of local CVS's, Libraries, and more!) or you can... link
about 48 minutes ago
cblowery21: @utjrushing Go to a cvs or a walgreens. I noticed they have a "as seen on tv" section. I'll bet you can find something funny.
about 2 hours ago
ADLawrence: @jesshibb Why CVS? Convenience? And is @AdoramaPix local or worth the by-mail wait?
about 4 hours ago
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 | By Andy Tarnoff   Publisher E-mail author | Author bio More articles by Andy Tarnoff |
| Published May 17, 2007 at 10:50 a.m. |
|
OK, so some dude is standing outside the CVS Pharmacy on the corner of Brady and Farwell holding a sign reading, "CVS: Where is the Shepherd Express?"
Seems the guy is upset that he can no longer get his weekly newspaper at the drug store, but he can still get a copy of MKE, Auto Guide, Wisconsin Auto & RV and Job Dig. The bigger issue, apparently, is if this is part of a right-wing conspiracy from the Rhode Island corporation that recently bought Osco.
Newsworthy? Barely -- maybe. Iffy, at best.
But especially not if you're the Shepherd Express, and you decide to devote a full-on article about the topic, referring to yourself in the third-person, quoting the efforts of your publisher to get your magazine back on the shelves.
The "free-lance journalist who has no affiliation with the Shepherd" got ticketed … free speech … first amendment … yadda, yadda. Riveting journalism, indeed.
I particularly like this line:
"Shepherd publisher Louis Fortis said he repeatedly called the Rhode Island headquarters to determine why CVS changed its policy, but did not receive a response. Fortis heard from other sources that a customer in Wauwatosa complained about the Shepherd's criticism of President Bush and the war in Iraq and demanded that the paper be pulled from the store."
I wasn't aware that CVS was mandated to carry any newspapers on their shelves. Maybe they just ran out of room. Maybe they just didn't like the escort ads in the back pages.
Anyway, the story's not the interesting part here -- it's the story about the story that got our attention. If you absolutely must write about yourself, make sure it's at least newsworthy. (Before you Talkback about the Bush visit to the OMC headquarters in 2005 and the story we wrote about the experience, please consider the difference in these two topics: guy holding sign outside CVS, versus presidential visit to Milwaukee dot com company.)
Not that I was expecting Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism from the Shepherd, but next time, please try to make it look a little less self-promoting.
Read and judge for yourself at the link below.
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20 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review. |
Recent Talkbacks ...
Posted by mattcavin on May 30, 2007 at 6:31 p.m. (report)
For more on Jeff White's ridiculous antics, see: www.mattcavin.blogspot.com
| Rate this: |
Posted by unconvinced on May 30, 2007 at 3:39 p.m. (report)
I am disappointed with CVS' decision and am planning to move my prescriptions to a different pharmacy. I did email CVS and they could not give me a good answer about why the Shepherd was pulled as opposed to papers that were allowed to remain. Alternative viewpoints are necessary in a free society and the banning of a newspaper, free or not, is indeed news.
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Posted by DjembeDan on May 21, 2007 at 1:55 p.m. (report)
If the Shepherd article wasn't newsworthy in the first place, what is the point of this article?
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Posted by CoolerKing on May 21, 2007 at 9:23 a.m. (report)
mkelover - The Economist and the National Review are not free publications, you have to either subscribe or purchase them. You need to complain to CVS's magazine distributors for not carrying either of them. The Shepherd is free, but with LOTS of advertising inside of them. No matter which way you swing politically, if it's either left or right and it's free there shouldn't be any issue. And if Webster's definition of censoring is "to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable" then I would call this an example of it. The fact that CVS hasn't responded on the corporate level about this hasn't really helped them. Their store manager gives me the impression he's got an axe to grind in the quotes he's given. If CVS says, "Hey, we got a lot of customer complaints from a lot of our stores about carrying this magazine", then it's good enough for me. Personally, I read it more for the entertainment articles than the politics. If I want a copy, I can find it at many other places. But the guy has the right to make his point publicly about it just like you and I are on this website. And unless he has been in peoples' faces about it to the point of freaking them out, then he is wrongly being harassed for stating his opinion.
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Posted by littletinyfish on May 19, 2007 at 5:11 p.m. (report)
Skarzan, I'm surprised it took 15 comments to bring it up! This censorship is a slippery slope, but taking the rag out of CVS is like slipping ten feet down pikes peak. Doesn't this guy have any better free speech demonstrations?
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Show me the other 15 Talkbacks
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