Last week’s reports of huge financial losses, and internal emails threatening additional staff cuts, are raising more concerns about the viability of Gannett and the newspapers it operates across the US. As they can still be considered a “competitor” when it comes to local news coverage, it would be easy for me to dunk on Gannett here and claim some sort of victory for electronic media over traditional print sources. But as a resident of the area–and someone who cares about news coverage of goings-on in my community–I do not want to see another outlet further reduce its efforts in the community.
Increased competition–not decreased–makes all of us in journalism better. And having even fewer reporters on the street and on the beat means our listeners, viewers and readers get less of the information they need to make informed decisions–whether they be with their votes or their pocketbooks.
While Gannett’s financial troubles continue to stem from the huge amounts of capital and debt it has tied up in physical facilities to produce printed products, their local papers have become less and less local–losing touch with the subscriber base it expects to sign on for new digital subscriptions. When accepting compliments for our local news coverage, the one thing I hear the most from people is that the paper “doesn’t have any news in it anymore”. A lot of that perception comes not from what the consumer considers “news” now–but rather what those in journalism consider “news”.
When I started out in small town radio, my first boss told me the most important thing to have on the morning newscast is the answer to “why was there a siren in town last night?” It was tradition on that station to read both the overnight police reports from Marinette and Menominee–which almost always answered that question. Police and fire call reports were staples of newspapers for decades–but are not found anywhere in print or on-line editions anymore. Instead, social media accounts maintained by people streaming the scanners have picked up the slack in that type of reporting.
Local circuit court clerks used to put out all of the files pertaining to newly-filed cases at their front desks for reporters to peruse on a daily basis. The state’s Circuit Court Access Program has made that less necessary–as we can access court filings from our offices–but so-called “intake reports” are no longer published.
But the biggest losses have been suffered in the area of covering local governments. That is our bread and butter here at WHBY. I always joke that I “watch the meetings so you don’t have to”–although I wish more people did watch them. The one good thing that came out of the pandemic is that more council, board, and committee meetings were streamed so that public access was easier and far more available. But fewer and fewer of them are getting the coverage they deserve. Stepping into that void are websites like the Oshkosh Examiner (whose publisher and reporter Miles Maguire joins me every Wednesday to discuss stories, because he is the one actually doing the work to put them together) and All Things Appleton–which provides better minutes of municipal meetings than those provided by the city and school district itself.
So why is traditional print media going away from covering the very basics of local news? For starters, meetings with potential community impact tend to be very long. And when the reporter assigned to such a meeting is limited to just eight hours a day or 40-hours a week to stay in budget–those are seen as “time sucks”. And the new generations of reporters coming into the field don’t want to cover that anyway. More and more, they are interested in “advocacy journalism”–doing stories that advance their own beliefs in what society should be. While that may be great for on-line magazines and personal blogs where you can go 10-thousand words on how Hmong chefs are reconnecting with their cultures through traditional food offerings, it doesn’t tend to bring in a lot of clicks on the newspaper website to get to the ads that provide the revenue needed to keep the newsroom staffed properly.
I have been involved in more than a few seminars and clinics where presenters have encouraged us to do more stories on “issues important to the less represented in our communities”. That usually leads to some hemming and hawing when I ask why things like taxes, school performance, and crime in the community are not considered “minority issues”. Do LGBTQ people not pay property taxes? Are not minorities affected the most by schools that have literacy rates of less than 35%? While minorities make up a disproportionate percentage of those charged with crimes, don’t they also make up an equally disproportionate percentage of victims of crime?
There is still an audience for coverage of local news presented by people educated and trained to present it in fair and accurate ways. But it requires a lot of work–and probably putting your personal preferences aside. Lets hope the folks at Gannett–or whoever picks up the pieces of that corporation–re-dedicate themselves to it.
