Where are the local journalists?

LancasterEditor says:

I'm just guessing, the person (or people) you seek has probably been laid off already in one of the waves of cuts.

interestedcitizen says:

I think it has something to do with information overload. What do we really need to know? I try to read the printed newspaper every day, but still, details escape my memory. Which African country had an uprising? Cameroon, Angola, Uganda, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, or Somalia? Was it in Pakistan, Belorus, the Ukraine, or Uzbekistan where there was a terrorist bombing? Are the Kurds at peace with the Sunnis in Iraq? Have they settled their dispute with Turkey? Which militant group claimed responsibility, the Sikhs, the Hindus, or the Buddhists? Wasn't there something about the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan monks in the news? Somehow I missed the news story that a socialist leader had gained control in El Salvador, and what does that portend for the future, given socialst takeovers in Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela? What can we expect from Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay, and Argentina? What will happen when we are surrounded by a socialist Canada, a socialist South and Central America, and when there is a heavy Chinese influence in the Southern Hemisphere and Chinese ownership of American debt? Are we going to answer to the Communist Chinese in the future? If China dumps our dollars on the world market, what's going to happen to us? And I don't know the whole story about the growing chaos in Mexico.

When I have a hard time organizing the facts about world events that dominate the front section of the newspaper, I really have a hard time paying attention to what is happening in Dallas County Schools.

As much as I support democracy, maybe there comes a point where we have too many levels of government. There are so many different government entities that we can't keep them all accountable. Eventually, they learn that the public isn't really paying attention. Year after year, they slide by with less than perfect accountability. They survive on a pragmatic philosophy. As long as they don't intend to harm anybody, what's a little mistake here and there? Of course, letting things slide is the opening door to fraud. What might have been accidental for a previous administration might become outright intentional for a later administration. We put our trust in prosecutors, but now we have a prosecutor who is more focused on exonerating innocent people than cleaning up government.

It's really tough, keeping government accountable. What's really tough is expecting someone with a journalism degree to be smarter than the CPAs and accountants that help cover the governments' mistakes and even become complicit in hiding vital information.

I don't have an answer. I'm just as bewildered as the writer of this article. What is just as bewildering to me, though, is the superficial comments like that of A. Troup that I constantly see below serious articles like this. It is as if people are living in their own little worlds and aren't trying to understand what is really happening in the culture or the world at large. It is as if they have no worldview or framework to evaluate what is happening. It is as if they don't see the relevance of what is happening around them. The only thing worth processing is what is immediately in front of them. Everything, they must think, is a passing fad. Everything is in a state of flux. Change is inevitable. We're like gas molecules, accidentally bumping into one another. Given this contstant change and this lack of certainty, what is the point of processing anything other than what immediately affects us? I think it is the general lack of interest, and the information overload that has led to decline in journalism. We've lost the ability to discern truth, and that has made journalism irrelevent.

CitizenKane says:

I don't know about the question, but the answers are in alternative reporting venues that are smaller, more nimble, and do not have the vested interest in access that big city newpaper owners/editiors/reporters need.

Nu2Texas says:

The reason citizen journalists are called to report local news is because many of us who were formerly employed by the local press have been laid off. We are out looking for work that pays us regularly for our talents and abilities and don't have time to attend the local school board meeting or other smaller government entities. Someone suggested that the "mainstream" media only reports sensational news. The word "only" is incorrect. But over and over in readership surveys, what people gravitate to is scandal, crime and celebrity. Since newspapers are supposed to be for-profit institutions, they're going to report what people really want, not necessarily what they say they want. I could jump in and do what I used to do for free, but I really would prefer not to.

davidhinckley says:

"When I have a hard time organizing the facts about world events that dominate the front section of the newspaper, I really have a hard time paying attention to what is happening in Dallas County Schools."

This is a good point, which I think gets to the heart of the problem. Day-to-day school policy is low enough on the list of priorities for most people that it doesn't draw the kind of readership that will support regular coverage. And like Mike said, this is a time when old journalism is declining and new journalism hasn't quite taken its place, leaving holes in coverage for those areas where interest is the lowest.

The other big issue is that the public mentality hasn't quite caught up with the new media picture. I really believe that more and more, news sites will resemble Pegasus News, which means that a lot of the content will be produced by outside sources. Those sources in many cases won't be doing it as a day job, but they'll have enough interest in an area that they gather information for their own purposes and make modest profit by posting it on the web alongside Google ads. Maintaining that kind of site right now is already really easy, it's just that society hasn't gotten to the point where 1. enough people think to look to blogs as news sources, or 2. people with interest in a topic know they can take ownership of it.

There will always be enough people interested in Dallas County Schools to support coverage by that model, even if the numbers will be modest. And for many topics on the day-to-day, that's really all the coverage we need. When news breaks that a wider audience will want to know about, the larger sources will aggregate the content, provide additional resources to cover it, or simply lend the support of their readers by linking to it. If public interest grows, the ad revenue might support one person doing full-time coverage. It's all supply and demand. At the moment, there's a small demand for coverage that's not fully being met in Dallas County. I think it's precisely people like Jeff Melcher who will fill it.

jtmbls says:

Should focus on really important issues like fashion!

Is Michael Kors a Sadist? As if a five inch heel were not difficult enough to walk in, Michael Kors sloped platforms have women teetering their way to a whole new center of gravity!

Now that is a click magnet!

paareader says:

Rick's Cabaret is worth almost twice as much as A.H. Belo - the owner of the Dallas Morning News and 3 other papers. The market values a chain of strip clubs to be worth twice as much as the Dallas Morning News.

A. H. Belo Corporation (NYSE: AHC) headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is a distinguished newspaper publishing and local news and information company that owns and operates four daily newspapers and a diverse group of Web sites. A. H. Belo publishes The Dallas Morning News, Texas' leading newspaper and winner of eight Pulitzer Prizes since 1986; The Providence Journal, the oldest continuously-published daily newspaper in the U.S. and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes; The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA), serving southern California's Inland Empire region and winner of one Pulitzer Prize; and the Denton Record-Chronicle. The Company publishes various specialty publications targeting niche audiences, and its partnerships and/or investments include the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium and Classified Ventures, owner of cars.com. A. H. Belo also owns direct mail and commercial printing businesses.

Rick's Cabaret International, Inc. (NASDAQ: RICK) operates upscale adult nightclubs serving primarily businessmen and professionals that offer live adult entertainment, restaurant and bar operations. The company owns, operates or licenses adult nightclubs in New York City, Miami, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis and other cities under the names "Rick's Cabaret," "XTC," "Club Onyx" and "Tootsie's Cabaret". Sexual contact is not permitted at these locations. Rick's Cabaret also owns the adult Internet membership Web site, couplestouch.com; a network of online adult auction sites under the flagship URL naughtybids.com; ED Publications, the national trade magazine and convention for the adult nightclub industry; and Storerotica, the national trade magazine and convention for the adult product and intimate apparel industries. Rick's Cabaret common stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol RICK.

jtmbls says:

Wait...What are they auctioning???

So, was the point of that comment that Belo should get into the strip club business?

interestedcitizen says:

I get the point. The point is that we, the consuming public, don't value hard news and excellent journalism. Instead, what we truly value is entertainment. Few of us want adult entertainment and titillation, but the fact that there is such a huge, profitable market for that type of entertainment, simply illustrates the hunger in the heart of most of us for some form of entertainment. We consume information, not because it is necessary, but because it provides a means of escape from the mundane.

I'll admit I'm part of a dying breed. I love to read. The who, what, when, where, and why questions are important to me. When I see a 20 or 30 second clip, I want to know more. I want to sit down and read details. Short text messages don't do it.

It really is a question of priorities, though. What do I need to know? Is it more important to know who detonated what bomb where in the Middle East, or what ethnic group attacked what ethnic group in Africa, than it is to know that, right under my nose, government officials are fleecing the taxpayers despite the fact that we have a democratic process that is supposed to peacefully get rid of corrupt leaders?

We have examples of the failure of democracy all over the world, as we see first one group after another seek to seize power by violent means. Yet, here we have peaceful elections and still witness massive failures of democratically elected leaders. What do I really need to know?

I do know this. I don't need to know that Lindsey Lohan is on another binge or was arrested for assault. I don't need to know that Natasha Richardson died from a skiing accident. I don't need to know that a family of three died in an apartment fire. I don't need to know about a three car pileup on I-45 just south of Ferris. I don't need to know that a police officer harassed a man who ran a red light on the way to see his dying mother in law. I don't need to know that a woman left a baby in a car overnight, resulting in the child's death. Yet, the newspaper is full of that kind of stuff.

davidhinckley says:

Mr. interstedcitizen, I think there is actually a large underserved segment of the population who wants what you want. So eventually, someone smart is going to start a news site that will focus on aggregating links to the type of content you're looking for, because while each publication does a few of those stories, the police blotter and AP wire are much more efficient in filling the paper. But an aggregator has no such constraints. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if there's one already out there that suits what you're looking for on the national level. For example, I've found realclearpolitics.com to be a wonderful resource for elections and policy.