As of 8:30 am this morning, the inverted image at right could be found alongside The Register-Star’s story on alleged political pressure by State Senator Steve Saland on firehouses to which he’d donated. [SCREENSHOT] Is there a photo editor in the house?
The John Mason story, covered in other publications more than a week ago, is twice belated—having managed to miss both Election Day and Halloween.
On a related and more serious note, Carole Osterink made an important point yesterday at GoR, prompted by her discovery of a large trove of old newspapers online... Namely, if some historian a century from now goes back to research Hudson history and finds nothing but old Reg-Star articles, what kinds of mistaken conclusions might that person draw? Carole wrote:
[T]he Register-Star seems a somewhat unreliable chronicler of our history. It can't be counted on to get names right or to quote people accurately, and a recent bit of revisionism, when the Register-Star reported that the Halloween Parade this year was the first ever to take place in Hudson, riled a number of people. [... Its] bare-bones, cost-cutting practices may be the formula for survival in tough economic times, but it doesn't seem to be a very good one for the preservation of local history. A century from now, what reliable primary sources will survive to tell future generations what happened in Hudson in this generation?
For those interested in Hudson’s tumultous politics during the decade of 1998-2007, my piece for the City issue of Our Town is archived here (as a PDF); my blow-by-blow review of the successful battle to stop St. Lawrence Cement’s massive, coal-burning project is similarly archived here (again as a PDF).
