Why watchdogs are important

Even if they aren’t free

GateHouse Media, which owns the BJ and nearly every newspaper still breathing in America, in its frenzy to cut costs, also has dispensed with watchdogs.

There are no Hal Frys to make sure the words and grammar are accurate. There are no local photo editors to make sure that there’s nothing embarrassing in the pictures.

Hell, there are about 30 people at the BJ trying to do the work that 250 people once did in the JSK heyday.

Austin, Texas calls the shots. And Austin is not in Akron.

So the BJ ran a page one photo with the 2020 Rock and Rock Hall of Fame nominees . . . and a photo of Motorhead band members Phil Campbell, Lemmy Kilmister and Mikkey Dee.

But there was no watchdog to check Campbell’s fingers. Particularly the middle finger in both his hands.

The traditional FU insult gesture that some trace to the early Mafia days.

So the BJ had to apologize. It would have been better to pay a watchdog to check out Campbell’s middle fingers.

Or, as I think Ben Maidenburg famously said in one of his outbursts after checking the first edition of a BJ: “Doesn’t anybody edit this paper any more?”

Campbell has been in the controversy spotlight before. He was incensed that Motorhead founder the late Lemmy Kilmister got so much credit for everything written for the English heavy metal rock band formed in 1975 no matter who wrote it.

The name "Motörhead" is a reference to users of the drug amphetamine.

Campbell, Kilmister and Dee were in the final Motorhead lineup in 2015.

Motorhead members over the years included guitarists Larry Wallis, Eddie Clarke, Brian Robertson, Michael Burston and drummers Lucas Fox, Pete Gill and Phil Taylor.