2 June—On page two of this morning’s Hearst Republican-American is a short-short story headed “Small plane crashes in Long Island Sound near Tweed Airport, official says.” The four short paragraphs tell readers little more than that “two people were aboard the Piper Cherokee that went down near Branford at around 11 a.m.” and that “there was no further information available as of 11:25 a.m. Sunday.”

But further information did in fact become available not long after the Sunday morning ditching, well before Hearst Connecticut Media’s ridiculously early deadline for the day’s news. So you wonder why the bean counters who pose as editors didn’t bother to update the story. Or do you?

For the record, the doomed airplane had taken off from Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford, evidently headed for Tweed. (All that trouble to travel 21 miles?) The pilot declared an emergency at 10:24 and transmitted the distressed aircraft’s location, near Branford’s Thimble Islands. The man and woman on board—presumably the pilot and passenger—were fished out of the sound not long after the crash by the U.S. Coast Guard, with what Bridgeport’s popular ex-con mayor Joe Ganim told a TV news reporter were “only bumps and bruises.”

What was Joe Ganim doing in the story anyway?

To digress, does anybody wonder if Donald Trump will pardon Joe Ganim like he pardoned John Rowland. Why shouldn’t he? They’ve both served their time, after all. And aside from having been convicted and served time for corruption they’re like any other politicians. To clarify, John and Joe did what most politicians do but got caught doing it. So despite what he had said earlier, John—or somebody close to him—evidently supplicated Trump for his post-sentence pardon. But there’s no news about Joe. At this time anyway.

Back on topic, then, Hearst Republican-American readers may or may not be treated to a fuller report of the Piper Cherokee ditching tomorrow. Or next week, given the dilatory nature of far too many of the few things Hearst bothers to report on.

It’s worth noting that right alongside the ditching story—in the gutter column—is Hearst’s latest subscription offer: “Monday-Sunday,: [sic] $25/week; Sunday: $12/week; Unlimited Digital Access: $6.93/week.” No joke. It’s been there a fortnight.

For the record (twice in one disquisition!), the cover price of the Monday-Saturday Hearst Republican-American is $1.50, Hearst Sunday Republican $2.50. Do the arithmetic and react accordingly. And subscriptions to real newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are considerably less expensive.

So maybe Hearst Connecticut Media has a sense of humor after all and the gutter-column subscription offer for the Waterbury rag is in fact a joke. Like so much of its content . . .