News Deserts

The other day I was heading to work - I suddenly see five different Sheriff's patrol cars haulling ass from the direction of their substation across an upcoming intersection. About two seconds later, a sixth goes darting across, and as I saw in my rearview mirror, it didn't make it across - t-boned.

Anyway, I've been checking the local news to see if everyone is okay - and what could have happened to prompt six different patrol vehicles to go flying at Code 3 across an intersection - and absolutely nothing in the local paper, on its website, on the radio, on TV. I imagine at some point the sheriff's office will issue a short two paragraph release, which will be reported verbatim by the local press, a day or two after it happened - and perhaps even include what the initial call was.

Its when I realized we all live in news deserts, some are just more obvious than others. Yes, there is "news" out there - but if there isn't anyone to report it, or the paper doesn't publish for two days, or the local radio station only airs syndicated programs and even its local news cut-ins rely on the newspaper - it may as well not have happened. Its a serious problem. Even the local NPR outlet usually fills its Morning Edition and All Things Considered local cut-ins with NPR features about such topical items as honey from Yemen, or a study examining the mental health of people who work with the unhoused populations. (I wish I was kidding).

I want to know what is going on - but I really don't think I do anymore. We'd like to think all newspapers would be as gutsy as the one in Kansas, or uphold a basic obligation to serve the community in times of immense need, like in Maui - I just don't think there are that many anymore.

 

Looking at my most familiar newspaper sports website, I find two things that fill up a great deal of the front page.

1. Locally produced "how to watch" items that simply tell you where to find an upcoming NFL game, EPL telecast, etc. The kind of thing you do from your couch.
2. Some sort of betting post from a sports book they have a deal with.

And now, they've gotten into something called "Tribune News Service," in which they can pirate stories from other local newspaper websites and run them.

 

Dead serious, I find my local news on the local subreddit. Kinda sucks that it's come to that, but ...

 

That is the old McClatchy wire. We used to pull from it from time to time for inside wire features to supplement AP.

 

You know, I do remember that. My SE would never let us pull McClatchy stories from newspapers within shouting range. For this area, it's closer now than it used to be, because some of the contributors are Gannett papers. I've seen them run in this local.

 

When I was on the desk, some editors would prick up their ears every time a flock of sirens rolled past the building. The reporters who worked cop beats would snicker. Ninety-five out of 100 times the cause would not be newsworthy. Just sayin' -- I don't know what it's like out your way. This was a reasonably big city in the rust belt.

 

The local we’re-no-longer-a-newspaper has taken to having cub reporters openly ask for news tips on ours, then bombard the sub with links back to the mother site afterwards.

 

Back in the day - sure. These days newspapers don't earn the benefit of the doubt. I see local news sites posting direct releases from sources like universities and hospitals and crediting them. And maybe having five "new" stories a day on the website.

 

My formerly really good local newspaper has been purged of just about every decent reporter with any sort of institutional knowledge, either because of buyouts or people just getting out of the business. Now I see a bunch of young kids who never would have been hired directly writing 4-graf blurbs from press releases with bylines on them. And there seems to be no sense of urgency. If something happens, I'm likely to find something on a TV station website first. It is really sad.

 

One day just before 4 p.m., all of our photogs go hauling ass across the newsroom for the exit to downstairs and out of the building.

Five minutes later, we look out the window, and half the city cops have a couple of guys down and handcuffed across the street.

Failed bank robbery, right before the lobby closed for the day. Photogs, always dialed into the police scanner, got some nice shots.

Of course, that was long ago. Way back in 1995.

 

The top TV station in this market hired the best reporter away from the newspaper a year or so ago. He does what he's always done, but his stories are on the TV station's website. He's not a in-front-of-the-camera kind of guy, but that station has become my go-to for news.

The local paper now has only two reporters who have been there for 30-plus years, plus a very small handful of newbies. It prints three days a week, I think. When it announced it was ceasing daily publication, the story said that it would still be updating its site every day and providing the news that folks had gotten used to over the years, and that was a load of crap. The site doesn't get updated on the days the paper doesn't publish.

 

Wow. Absolute opposite experience I've had with most photographers at my shops (20-plus years in print, from 30K to major metro).

One guy, I swear, if he had advance knowledge of a presidential assassination, he wouldn't have bothered to work it if it were one minute past his out-the-door time OR if it was the opposite direction from the office as his home.

One of my shops had, for a time, a lifetime employment pledge ... basically, you had to try really, really hard to get fired. In my time, two employees got fired. Both were photographers.

I have had experience with exceptions, of course, people whose professionalism and talent were admirable. When I found out one guy was assigned to shoot a prep soccer game, I was so jazzed I called the schools and got rosters faxed (pre e-mail) to me so I could give them to the photographer just so he had one less thing to worry about.