Kenseth to get new crew chief

December 16, 6:05 PMDetroit NASCAR ExaminerJosh Lobdell

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There are a couple of news items I would like to get to, but there are also a couple of updates and additional things to add to a couple of stories I have already written.

Last week we were talking about what was going on over at Yates Racing, They let #38 crew chief Cully Barraclough go to assume a undefined role at Roush Fenway. Today I think his role is becoming clear. It appears that Drew Blickensderfer will move from the #60 Nationwide team of Carl Edwards, to the #17 Cup car of Matt Kenseth. Jayski is reporting that former #17 team crew Chief Chip Bolin is returning to his engineering duties with the team.

I really like this move. It reunited Drew and Kenseth after Drew served part of 2008 as Kenseth’s Nationwide crew chief. The simple fact here however remains that Bolin and Kenseth for what ever reason, never got themselves on the same page.

It used to be really easy to pencil in Kenseth for at least one win each and every season. He even won a race with Bolin on the pit box while Robbie Reiser was serving a suspension. Rather then play the blame game owner Jack Roush determined that is wasn’t working and made the move. Roush hates to lose and any time one of his teams goes winless someone is either getting fired or reassigned.

That is just how he runs his team.

Since Drew is leaving a hole at the #60 team I am sure that Barraclough will assume Crew Chief duties for Edward’s Nationwide team.

Now a little update.  It is now official the Detroit News, my personal nemesis of the week, is cutting home delivery from six days a week to three. Ed White of the Associated Press had this story on My Fox News Detroit.

I really believe that the economy is going to be used as the scape goat for these kinds of cuts. Editors the country over will blame a soft economy and the internet for slumping paper circulation.

I guess it never occurred to anyone in editorial land that quality actually matters to people. I know a lot of people who would rather read the newspaper then read a website, me included. The simple fact here is both Detroit newspapers have been bad for quite some time.

The Business section is barely four pages with the stock market results, the sports section offers nothing but tepid analysis of yesterday’s games. The entertainment section is not at all entertaining, and the news section is lifted from the AP wire.

Put the blame where you want -- the cuts to the writing staff, editorial staff, or whatever. The fact remains people are not going to read a bad paper online or otherwise.