Defanging the Watchdog

Governing magazine has an interesting story questioning whether cutbacks at newspapers are eroding coverage of local governments. If they are, that's proof that newspapers are cutting the wrong things. You know it's bad when community leaders and the politicians themselves are complaining about declining local coverage, as has happened recently in St. Louis, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Newspapers have an important role as watchdogs of local and state governments. Abdicating that is a serious disservice to readers—and an excellent way to lose still more circulation. Remarkably, a lot of newspapers don't seem to realize this, and often seem hellbent on preserving less-critical and less-unique—but flashy—staff positions (national sportswriters, TV reviewers, etc.) instead of putting a priority on local government coverage. Notoriously, the LA Times decimated its Orange County bureau a few years ago to shift resources to its Washington bureau (because, you know, there's so little coverage of Washington from other sources). When I was at the San Francisco Examiner two decades ago, the paper inexplicably covered the government of the Philippines far better than it covered the government of the city of San Francisco. That's just nuts.

Local coverage—governmental and otherwise—is the last redoubt of newspapers in America. Virtually everything else that appears in the paper is available elsewhere. It's a unique resource—and it should be defended at all costs. Yet some newspapers, as Governing documents, are shirking this responsibility.

That's opened an opportunity for new competitors, as Governing points out. Upstart competitors such as Voice of San Diego and the New Haven Independent, run by disaffected journalists and political activists, are filling gaps left by the local media with detailed coverage of what's going on in local government. Hyperlocal citizens media projects like Backfence, iBrattleboro and Pegasus News are offering news and views on local government doings that aren't otherwise available. And blogs, Yahoo groups and local listservs are increasingly becoming places where citizens can find out about their local government and come together to take action. All of these developments render newspapers less relevant.

If newspapers leave a void in local government coverage, these competitors will fill it. And if newspapers lose their edge on this important local franchise, they'll discover the hard way something fundamental and important about politics and governing: People vote with their feet.

Comments

[Kare Anderson]

I heartily agree with you about defending local coverage (ah "bowling alone") to keep an informed, involved citizenry.... Such coverage creates and maintains conversational threads. This is ever more important as Americans belong to fewer organizations.

it's not just to be informed to vote but having that common language of events for caring and connection.

I'll bet the 50+ crowd will get increasingly involved as readers and writers of that coverage.
- another rrecovering journalist
and another fan of this high quality blog
- Kare, SavvyHer.com