Q: If tens of thousands of residents show up in your downtown to celebrate an historic grand opening over a three day weekend, do you think this would appear on the front page of your town’s only daily newspaper?
A: Yes — unless your town is Tucson, and your daily newspaper is the Arizona Daily Star.
On Friday, July 25, 2014 the City of Tucson and the Regional Transportation Authority hosted a series of ribbon cutting events with local pols to formally celebrate the Sun Link Tucson Streetcar launch.
With a variety of celebrations at various stops and a grand opening kickoff downtown, Tucsonans got their first chance to ride the Sun Link Tucson Streetcar. Rides were free through Sunday.
There was even a “pop up beach” as one of the celebrations, and it is available to the public through August 31st. The beach sits opposite the patio at Hotel Congress (at Toole and 5th Avenue), along the streetcar route. More than 170 tons of trucked-in sand made the beach, where you can build a castle, play volleyball, and schedule events for you or your company for free. The pop up beach is completely privately-funded and available to all.
So did any of this make the front page of our sad small town newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star? Of course not — but feral cats, pregnant elephants, and the Star’s promotion of its own crappy content did. (See below). The Star is failing our Tucson community miserably. Lee Enterprises, please just leave our town. You suck!
Pamela Powers Hannley will have a post with her photos from the weekend.
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
Their political coverage of the capitol is non-existent except for Howard Fisher’s viewpoint.
I’m sorry you’re disappointed in the placement of the streetcar stories. The Star had front-page photos Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday’s paper included a 12-page special section on all the festivities and cool stuff to do along the streetcar line so people could plan ahead to be part of the fun. I hope you got to see the great photo of Steve Farley and other ribbon cutters on the cover of the Tucson section on Saturday. And we had a lot of great photos and videos on our website and on our social media pages. You can check out all the coverage at Tucson.com/streetcar.
Yes the Star did a special section preview, but the event itself did not appear on the front page of the weekend newspapers, which is indisputable. Even you would question the editorial discretion to run with feral cats on the front page over the streetcar which has been politically divisive in this community for years.
It appears to long-time Star readers (since 1964) that Lee Enterprises intends to move its content online, and the print edition of the newspaper is becoming more and more just print advertising. This is not what newspaper readers want or expect, even if this is the only way the paper can make enough money to keep operating.
17,000 people rode the SunLink streetcar on the first day. That news was published in the middle of section C with a ~6″ story, and half of that story was the schedule. In the same issue, *chalk paint* got a full page feature story with three color photos. The good news about the streetcar was buried by the Star.
Yeah, the Star has really fallen down professionally. Sometimes it looks like a high school newspaper. It’s story selection can be pathetic. As a native of Tucson I often feel embarrassed for the local daily.
Yes, when it arrives in our front yard in the morning. I tell Jim, “Your newsletter is here!”
A photo of the grand opening ceremonies of Sun Link would have been appropriate for Saturday’s edition. The Star’s long time photographer Benjie Sanders did just retire.
I’m sure the Star has more than ONE photographer….
Tucson made history this weekend, 60,000 people rode the streetcar in 3 days, and the Star almost completely ignored it. Monday’s front page story with a color photo in the Star was a janitor painting the walls at Marana high school.
Today’s Road Runner column was all about the national trend to use public transportation. This would have been a perfect story to augment with a great local angle about the streetcar. Instead, in the second to last paragraph, the author noted that the RTA funded a variety of projects… oh, yeah… including the streetcar.
I’m surprised that the Downtown Tucson Partnership isn’t leaning on the Star for some coverage.