And Then There Was No Local Reporting
First Lucy Ann Lance was let go from WAAM. Now the “Community Life” section of The Ann Arbor News is being cut as well. It doesn’t look good for the future of local news and reporting in Ann Arbor.
Why should bloggers and blog readers care about the demise of the ossified mainstream media? Because we need them. We’ve always thought of the relationship between bloggers and mainstream media as being roughly analogous to the one between Hercule Poirot and Scotland Yard Chief-Inspector Japp:
[Captain Hastings:] “You could go out and solve this case magnificently if you only would.”
Poirot replied that he preferred to solve it sitting at home.
“But you can’t do that, Poirot.”
“Not entirely, it is true.”
“What I mean is, we are doing nothing! Japp is doing everything.”
“Which suits me admirably.”
“It doesn’t suit me at all. I want you to be doing things.”
“So I am.”
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Pour que mon chien de chasse me rapporte le gibier,” replied Poirot with a twinkle.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the good Japp. Why keep a dog and bark yourself? Japp brings us here the result of the physical energy you admire so much. He has various means at his disposal which I have not. He will have news for us very soon, I do not doubt.”
Newspapers have various means at their disposal that we don’t: time, resources and job freedom. The blogs-vs.-traditional media debate tends to obscure this. Blog proponents try to argue that we don’t need the traditional media at all. Mainstream media partisans realize that we do, but tend to attribute the need to their own superior writing, analytical skills or editing process.
Bloggers analyze and interpret. The mainstream media analyzes and interprets too, so maybe they don’t need us so much, but we need them; we need the results of the physical energy that Captain Hastings admires so much in order to have things to analyze and interpret. If things keep going the way they’re going, we’ll be practicing our bark.
Hooray, most beautifully put. We do indeed need investigative journalists for such “game” as the Walter Reed story in the Washington Post and the numerous torture docs in the NYT. Those of us with day jobs can’t put in the time and attention to pull this off.
posted by anonymous too on January 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pmWell Gannett SURELY isn’t profitable these days, so guess it makes sense to axe the local coverage in exchange for more column inches to report on Britney…
oops! (check out #6): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/post200/2005/2005executivepay_totalcompchart.html
posted by (former) OFWinsurgent on January 22nd, 2008 at 2:14 pmActually, more up-to-date info here: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/post200/2007/GCI/
posted by (former) OFWinsurgent on January 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 pmI totally don’t understand the philosophy of cutting local coverage. Local news is the only reason I subscribe to the paper. I can read all the wire service articles I want online, days or even weeks before they’re published in the AANews. What I can’t do is easily find out in one place what’s going on around town … blogs are great for discussion, but I want to be able to find out what’s going on in local news in my local newspaper.
posted by jf on January 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 pmRight, but the local newspaper can’t do all that stuff any more and still make money. What they want is to download all those wire service stories onto newsprint, and have you pay the same price you did when they had to pay salaries to local reporters and writers.
In the future, we’ll look back fondly on the halcyon days when newspapers used to send reporters to cover local government meetings, keeping the community informed of what their elected officials were doing. Oh, wait, we already do!
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on January 22nd, 2008 at 3:12 pmWith the sad decline of the News, I suspect there may be an opening for a weekly newspaper in AA. Not a new daily; those are way too capital-intensive. But given the affluence of the community, there should be plenty of ad dollars floating around to support a solid weekly.
A decent weekly can’t cover as much as a good daily — but, heh, when was the last time you saw a good daily paper in southeast Michigan? Get a few good reporters, dip into the rich freelance pool, get closer to the ground than the News has been in recent years.
I’m not talking about a Metro Times-style paper — not that there’s anything wrong with Metro Times. I’m talking about something with a reasonable quantity of news content in addition to local arts/culture coverage. The AA Observer is good, as far as it goes; but a monthly just doesn’t come out often enough to cover a community.
A weekly paper is certainly something of a gamble, but no more so than Yet Another Downtown Eatery or Gift Shoppe. And the upside could be significant, in terms of financial success and community service.
posted by jvwalt on January 23rd, 2008 at 2:07 amI would subscribe to a local weekly that focused on more that the local entertainment scene. Part of why we get the News is to model good civic behavior to our kids — knowing about what is happening in your city. And the kids loved the restaurant inspections that used to be in the Monday business section.
They certainly have enough people to spin out the weekly football press conference (which you can read online in its entirety on a Monday) into a week’s worth of articles.
posted by Clem on January 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 amIn the time/money balance, would you rather pay $14 a month and walk out to your step to pick up a newspaper or attend every city council, county board and school board meeting? I’ve watched the school board on cable and read the distillation of the meeting in the paper. It was fair and accurate. Time is our only renewable resource. I’ll pay for my local paper and the New York Times.
posted by Anonymous on January 23rd, 2008 at 11:51 amI get all my local news from AAIO and the guys who hang out at the Dairy.
posted by mucho gusto on January 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 pmNewspapers have various means at their disposal that we don’t: time, resources and job freedom.
I’m not convinced — nobody has the resources of Wikipedia. For any local story covered by the AA News, there are people who have more interest and knowledge and invest more time than the reporter assigned to the story. And there are all kinds of local experts who could cover and report on stories that the News wouldn’t touch.
Take high school sports — I’m sure there is NO shortage of people who would be more than willing to put together reports that would be an improvement on the coverage we see in the paper. Not only could a wiki-style site include far more in the way of photographs (and video clips), it could also cover all the less popular sports and middle-school sports and club sports that the News doesn’t bother with. The writing might be more amateurish (although it might not), but how important is that really for high-school sports? Or local news in general?
posted by mw on January 26th, 2008 at 9:47 pm“I’m not convinced — nobody has the resources of Wikipedia.”
Maybe not, but Arborwiki doesn’t have the resources of Wikpedia either. The pool of contributors is smaller. All the technical resources are there, but I’m not seeing the work you describe happening, despite several folks (juliew, hd, aaio…) doing more than their fair share.
But, hey, prove me wrong and go do it. Speak up if you need a hand.
posted by Bruce Fields on January 26th, 2008 at 10:12 pmmw wrote: “Take high school sports …”
Burrill Strong’s photography is a nice chronicle of Chelsea High School sports. During football season, he typically includes a written narrative to go along with the photos. I don’t care anything about Chelsea high school sports, but a sports season viewed through the lens of an unapologetic fan is sometimes more interesting to me than neutral reporting on sports teams I care about.
posted by HD on January 26th, 2008 at 11:21 pm“Maybe not, but Arborwiki doesn’t have the resources of Wikpedia either. The pool of contributors is smaller. “
Of course it is, but the scope is incomparably smaller, too. I wouldn’t expect volunteers to go out an act like reporters and news photographers in the sense of going to events, taking photos and writing stories about things they are otherwise uninterested in.
What I was envisioning were citizens reporting about things they know well and cared about, with the local ‘wikinews’ providing the framework. I think the mere existence of the ‘wikinews’ could prompt many more such volunteer efforts. People, I think would be willing to take on reporting and writing on a topic near-and-dear to them if they had a way of publishing, had a chance to become the community expert, the go-to person in a particular domain.
So far, ArborWiki isn’t really that kind of thing at all — it’s an online city guide rather than a online newspaper. Which is fine, of course — that is needed too, but it doesn’t fill the same niche as a newspaper.
I did a little experiment with today’s paper looking through the stories. For each story, I checked whether it was a local story written by an AANews staffer (most aren’t) and for those minority that were local, I asked myself whether it was important that a professional reporter had written it and whether there was likely one or more citizens who were ‘geeks’ in that area and that would have been willing to submit the story.
It seemed to me that in general, there was no particular reason that it was necessary for a paid reporter to have done the work and that in virtually every case probably there were people out there with a strong enough interest in the topic that they would have been willing to write it provided there was a place where other would actually read it.
Certainly that’s true of the sports, entertainment, and business sections, where there are local aficionados, I think, who would be more than willing to produce those pieces (and many more) if they thought people would read them and that they’d become a part of the ‘official’ community record.
And don’t get me started on how much a wiki-produced local Travel section would be. Not single AA News written piece in the section and not even a single piece about travel within the state — the closest was a Cedar Point press release (’Cedar Point to add 7 Rides’).
posted by mw on January 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pmBut what if you’re the town expert on pharmaceutical layoffs — because all your friends were laid off and you could be next? Are you really going to write about it publicly?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 27th, 2008 at 4:19 pm“But what if you’re the town expert on pharmaceutical layoffs — because all your friends were laid off and you could be next? Are you really going to write about it publicly?”
Well, not under a byline, but it seems to me that one of the strengths of informal internet publishing has been that it has become easier for ‘whistleblowers’ to get information out.
posted by mw on January 27th, 2008 at 9:06 pmBut no one trusts you if you’re anonymous. Well, some people might listen to you on an issue like, oh, maybe a certain city not living up to its hype, but they’re not going to believe that you actually witnessed corruption or exploitation. If a real reporter repeats the accusations, though, you can be reasonably sure that they checked it out. (Probably? Maybe? If their name isn’t Blair or Glass?)
As much as I hate to defend the mainstream media, we need someone whose job it is to ask uncomfortable questions and write down uncomfortable facts. Because those are the kinds of things that would get most of us fired from our jobs.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pmI am the Burrill Strong whom HD referenced … when it comes to the necessity of actual media outlets, I am inclined to agree with aaio; as nice as it may sound to talk about everyday local citizens reporting the news, I don’t think it’s a realistic idea when it comes to producing consistent reliable results. I’m pretty sure there would be just as many reasons to complain about those efforts as there are to complain about the AA News.
As far as HS sports, I’m actually pretty happy with the coverage the AA News provides for the region. Local weeklies handle (or should handle) the bulk of HS sports reporting, but the AA News functions fairly well as a central resource for area HS sports.
posted by Burrill on January 27th, 2008 at 10:56 pmBut no one trusts you if you’re anonymous. Well, some people might listen to you on an issue like, oh, maybe a certain city not living up to its hype, but they’re not going to believe that you actually witnessed corruption or exploitation. If a real reporter repeats the accusations, though, you can be reasonably sure that they checked it out. (Probably? Maybe? If their name isn’t Blair or Glass?)
You have way more faith in ‘real reporters’ than I do. And what is the advantage of a reporter writing an ‘inside sources say’ piece vs the inside source writing anonymously?
As much as I hate to defend the mainstream media, we need someone whose job it is to ask uncomfortable questions and write down uncomfortable facts. Because those are the kinds of things that would get most of us fired from our jobs.
Shrug. It’s just not clear that the economics are going to continue to support that model. The bulk of the newspaper reading audience is gradually graying and dying off (and circulations are declining even faster rate than that). Perhaps these trends will reverse, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Burrill:As far as HS sports, I’m actually pretty happy with the coverage the AA News provides for the region. Local weeklies handle (or should handle) the bulk of HS sports reporting, but the AA News functions fairly well as a central resource for area HS sports.
Yes, I agree the AA News does a decent job if you’re interested in mainstream varsity sports. But it provides little or no coverage of middle-school sports, non-varsity high-school sports, more obscure varsity sports or club sports. The AA News could not possibly afford to send reporters and photographers to cover all these other sports, and yet most of them have dedicated fans who are already attending all the games and taking the photos. And these teams already ask for parent volunteers for all kinds of things — volunteers to submit ‘wikinews’ articles about the games would be no big stretch.
posted by mw on January 28th, 2008 at 7:48 amWell, anonymous sources have come under a lot of fire lately. But at least the reporter and editor know who the anonymous source is and (ideally) do some fact checking. And newspapers are much better libel suit targets than penniless anonymous bloggers.
(I’ve posted before that a couple media outlets have interviewed me, but wouldn’t run the story because I wanted to be anonymous. I told the interviewer who I was; I just didn’t want my name printed.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 28th, 2008 at 8:35 ammw, I think it’s a fine idea on paper, but I don’t think it would really be that easy to find a consistent workforce for that effort, and I think the results would be spectacularly uneven at best. If you simply want coverage without concern for some sort of quality and consistency, it might happen, but for every team that had a dedicated parent capable of writing worthwhile articles, you’d most likely encounter numerous teams with very substandard articles from people with plenty of willingness but little ability — or teams with no volunteers at all.
Believe me, I’m not against such an effort; I just think it would be considerably harder than you’re making it sound. I would like to see something like that happen, but I’m not holding my breath.
posted by Burrill on January 28th, 2008 at 12:56 pm