Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Did you know: writer and urban theorist Jane Jacobs once was a reporter for the Scranton Tribune?

You learn something every day. Jane Jacobs, famous for her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," was born and raised in Scranton and even worked on The Tribune long before it was folded into the Lynett empire. Regrettably, the Times-Tribune does not seem to ever have written of her, at least in the last six years. How interesting a story would it have been had the newspaper paid her way to come back to her hometown for a few days, walk around, and write something up for her old paper? Her take on urbanism in Scranton in the 21st Century? She was only one of America's preeminent thinkers on the topic. An opportunity squandered, regrettably but not surprisingly.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not suprising at all that the Scranton paper(s) did not write about their former reporter's life and contributions to society. After all, Tom Cruise and what's her name are, like, you know, more important, you know. And don't forget the Aruba incident and Courtney Love and the latest "news" release from Paul Kanjorski.
This atmosphere of dumbing down the content is, more and more, the sorry excuse we're confronted with day after day after day when it comes to traditional media outlets.

Anonymous said...

It's not like she was Jason Miller or anything.

Or a Casey.

Anonymous said...

You are too harsh. Jacobs left Scranton in 1934 and moved permanently to Canada in 1968. She was 89 when she died. Is it realistic that she would have visited Scranton in the last six years, which is as far as your search goes?