The St. Augustine Record "Fantasy Five" and Their Fuzzy Math

Federal law requires newspaper publishers to print an annual ad reporting on their ownership and circulation.

Yesterday's St. Augustine Record carried the obligatory ad, which was well-night illegible.

The St. Augustine Record apparently over-inked the ad, or made it fuzzy electronically.

The numbers and names are almost illegible.

The USPS-required ad appears below the day's Florida Lottery "Fantasy Five" numbers, which are perfectly readable, like the rest of page A3. Only the ad is illegible, as if someone didn't want you reading it.

The ad bears the names of five Morris family members and their corporations as owners.

Call the five Morris family members the "Fantasy Five" -- their fantasy is that they are in the journalism business.

There is little real journalism left in the WRecKord, which printed an online death threat July 24, 2013 at 6AM drected against our City officials over the Mumford & Sons concert, calling on them to be "lined up and shot" in the Slave Market Square, demanding he concert be cancelled. The WRecKord never revealed the name of the poster, and never took down the posting -- when I asked WRecKord poster Delinda Fogel, CPA to do so, she asked me, "Do you have a journalism degree?"

The fuzzy USPS-mandated ad shows fuzzy circulation numbers, which are moribund and not growing with the county's population.

In the highest per capita income county in the State of Florida, there is apparently only one (1) copy of the only daily newspaper sold for every sixteen (16) residents in St. Johns County. Pitiful.

News -- people hunger for it. As a young editor 32 years ago, I wrote most of the first issue of the Appalachian Observer in 1981, without ever having taken a single journalism course at Georgetown (where it was not offered at the time).

Since we covered the news, people loved it -- we covered what other newspapers dared not cover -- government and corporate misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery, nincompoopery, waste fraud and abuse.

Our readers told us ineluctable truths. We investigated them. We covered the news. Our readers soon saw concrete results -- the people ran off a crooked School Superintendent. The FBI and U.S. Attorney carted off a corrupt Sheriff. The people elected a reform County Attorney, they re-elected five reform County Commissioners and they re-elected an embattled reform District Attorney.

We exposed the largest mercury pollution event in world history (4.2 million pounds dumped into workers' lungs and brains and into the creeks and groundwater at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant by Union Carbide and the Department of Energy); the St. Augustine Record ediorialized about it on November 13, 2006.

It takes a village.

Our beautiful City St. Augustine and St. Johns County are worth preserving. But the WRecKord is more interested in fluff than news, more interested in kissing up to the powerful than informing the people.

As reporter William Greider's book title asked, "Who will tell the people?"

Our St. Johns County residents are intelligent, but the WRecKord talks down to us.

The WRecKord dishes out real news as little as possible, while foisting upon readers the likes of Ann Coulter (and other right-wing nutjobs), giving Coulter extra space on a dull, uninteresting "editorial page" that no longer has any sign of locally written editorials.

The "Fanstasy Five" Morris Family members have delusions of adeequacy. They and their hired-hand "publisher" are insouciant to the public's desire for news. They take their readers for granted, and long ago decided to coverup the news instead of uncovering it.

How appropriate that the WRecKord's "fuzzy math" in its fuzzy, overinked USPS-mandated circulation and ownership ad appears directly below the "Fantasy Five" numbers.

What do y'all reckon?

UPDATE: The Record re-ran the ad on October 2, 2013, without all of the fuzziness. You can clearly see the pitiful circulation numbers, and the names fo the "Fantasy Five" -- the WRecKord owners from the Morris family, and their corporations -- who think they are in the journalism business. This dull Republican Wrecking Crew has no more idea about jouranlism than a hog, having decreased journalistic standards and ignoring major scandals and stories in our county.