Coupeville Sports

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Suck it, Coupeville.

That’s what the Canadian-owned “local” newspapers are telling us, whether they use the words or not. Go away and let us count our loonies in private, peons.

What began as a shame has become a disgrace over the past five days.

The Whidbey News-Times and Whidbey Examiner have yet to run a SINGLE photo from Friday’s Coupeville High School Homecoming parade or the game and halftime show itself.

Yes. That’s right. The “papers of record,” the “professionals,” the “responsible journalists” have basically flipped the middle finger at our town and told us, nope, the accomplishments of your children mean nothing to us.

When their print editions finally hit the street today, some 120 hours or so after the events (the equivalent of five years in media-savvy 2013), I am sure there will be a photo or two. Yet, the websites that garner far more eyeballs than the print edition, have had diddly and squat.

This never would have happened even a year ago.

When Kasia Pierzga ran the Examiner — before she sold it to Sound Publishing — she would have had a photo up on her website 10 minutes after the parade passed. Even if she was running a fever of 110 and had to power her internet connection with two hamsters on a treadmill.

I have absolutely, positively no doubt of that.

She realized we live and work in a small town, and events like that are the very lifeblood of small-town journalism.

Instead, we have sat for days with the main story on the Examiner site being a feature on Greenbank.

You know, Greenbank. That place that isn’t even part of Coupeville, which is what the Examiner exists to cover.

There’s another Canadian-owned rag, the South Whidbey Record, a sister paper that exists solely for that reason — to write stories about SOUTH WHIDBEY.

When I jump on the Canadian-owned newspapers, I feel no great joy.

Twenty years ago I took some very small paychecks from that same company. Many of the people that work at those newspapers are mentors, and I am sure I continue to burn the bridges back to them on a daily, maybe even hourly basis.

But this? This is a shame. This is dereliction of duty. This reeks.

Shame on you for doing this to Coupeville and then trying to still pass yourself off as our “local” papers.

**If you’re in an email kind of mood, the address is: kgraves@whidbeynewsgroup.com.**