The NDG Monitor, which shut down in February and became online-only, and recently criticized a borough-produced newspaper for being nothing but press releases, is now itself cutting and pasting press releases to create news stories, as evidenced by this story which is identical to this release from Concordia University (and doesn’t mark it as such).

I’d say I was shocked, but I wasn’t. I’d say I was disappointed, but my expectations for this Transcontinental project were low to begin with.

The Monitor’s deterioration as a legitimate news outlet began long before its last issue came off the presses. It started in 1996 when it was sold to Transcontinental, which gutted everything to save money.

Now all it does is list community events and republish open letters, while contributing whatever news articles can be churned out with as little effort as possible. The rest of the website is filler from Transcontinental and its other community weeklies.

The Monitor is going to die eventually as a forgotten relic of a time when small communities could sustain local newspapers. Though I mourn the loss of any voice and the job of any journalist, part of me thinks they should just put it out of its misery.