Appreciative of Citizen staffers’ scruples
Thank you to everyone at the Citizen who have faithfully and professionally covered the news for our city. I applaud each and every one of you for having the scruples to continue on until the press is silent. Good job, and God bless.
Tyler Kilian
network manager
Owners painted Citizen into corner
Yes, newspapers are in sad shape nationwide. But a share of the blame for the Citizen’s demise must be laid at the feet of its owners, who have been painting this paper into a corner for years.
Once Gannett bought the Arizona Republic, original reporting in the Citizen gradually seemed to take second priority to recycled Phoenix copy.
I have long suspected it was (is?) an effort to turn Tucsonans into Arizona Republic subscribers. Such a plan can only have been cooked up at corporate headquarters in Virginia, where a non-Arizonan would fail to grasp just what an insult that is to Tucsonans.
It’s especially sad that this will go down as part of the decline of newspapers in a tough economy, when its systematic news “nuggetization” and Phoenix-centric approach in recent years helped kill the Citizen.
Though I haven’t relied on the Citizen for a long time, I lament the disappearance of the paper I grew up with, the one that taught me to appreciate newspapers.
My brother and sister delivered the Citizen when they were kids. It’s the paper my parents used to teach us to read and to care about the world, starting with the “funnies.”
Don Schellie’s columns made me want to be a newspaper writer. (“They actually PAY HIM to write about everyday life,” I realized at a young age.)
The silly little front-page weather poems taught me that there is a place for whimsy and poetry – no matter how bad – in the midst of “important” news.
The fact that Tucsonans much younger than me will not understand those references is indicative of how much the Citizen has been stripped of the individual flavor that used to set it apart from the Star, the Republic, the now-extinct Phoenix Gazette and other dailies.
It still breaks my heart that it’s closing, but the Citizen that hooked me on newspapers has been gone for a long time. I hope the Arizona Daily Star and other newspapers recognize this effect of homogenizing the news and do their best to avoid it.
Patricia Zapor
Tucson native
Takoma Park, Md.
Evidence of Canyon’s age not indisputable
With all respect to Jon Pelletier, the UA prof in geomorphology, many of his comments in Mark Kimble’s March 12 column (“Is the Grand Canyon only 6,000 years old?”) were wrong.
I respect his opinion, for that is all it ever can be. But to say there is “indisputable evidence that shows the . . . canyon is at least 5 to 6 million years” old is not true.
The “age of volcanic rock in the canyon” cannot be precisely dated, though that is what most people would like us to believe. Many geologists at universities also believe the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 years old (actually, 4,500 years old).
DOUG PRIORE
Don’t turn Tucson
into a clone of Phoenix
When my family moved to Tucson, we drove on a narrow, dusty, country dirt road into town: Houghton Road. A group of homes was just east of Wilmot, and farther east was ranch land.
Alvernon was a two-lane street, and when it rained, there were big puddles. When the monsoon came, North Swan and North Palo Verde turned into rivers! I got caught in both!
When they first widened Grant Road, they took a lot of beautiful front yards from those beautiful old homes. Then they tore down the beautiful old El Conquistador Hotel and the small cabins around it for El Con Mall. Now look at El Con.
The powers that be would have torn down the beautiful water tower, but too many objected. Also, the same wanted to tear down the unique and marvelous old courthouse But too many people objected, and we still have it (for now).
Why are so many people trying to turn Tucson into a copycat of Phoenix? We are unique, and I’d like to stay that way. The roundabout downtown was one, and now they plan to put one on Grant Road when they widen it.
They want to destroy the Rillito Race Track. There are too many other places they can play soccer; how about ballparks that are empty so long in the summer?
When they destroyed those 100-year-old barrio homes and displaced people who had lived there for years, I cried for them.
They built a downtown mall – a copy of one in Mexico. My daughter and I visited it years ago, and only three or four places were occupied. But the one in Sedona is thriving.
The old cactus at an intersection was dug up and moved, though they could have built the road around it and would have been unique. Where is it now?
Keep Tucson unique, please.
E. DAVIS