Community News
Times2 - Stop press: the sad decline of local newspapers, by Richard Morrison
Why should you care? The answer is that there will be even fewer newspapers around in future with the resources to investigate incompetent or corrupt councils, campaign against hospital closures or over-reaching developers, put a rocket up the backsides of police forces never seen patrolling bad estates, celebrate local achievements, or simply chronicle the warp and weft of British life in all its glorious, dotty multiplicity. In other words, the diminution of regional journalism will be another nail in the coffin of that thing we call “community”
Well, if I might offer my own American experience, the community newspapers are full of a bunch of half-rate hacks who couldn’t make it at the national papers so take their meager positions at local ones in order to still write about national matters. They don’t care about the community, they didn’t take their jobs in order to write about the community, and if the corrupt council is burning down the hospital to make room for over-reaching developers while the police build security barriers around bad estates right in front of them, they still wouldn’t write on it.
We picked up the Queen Anne News last week, which is so local it’s only for this particular hill in the city, and basically exists as a glorified real estate rag, and its editorial was all about the blatant lies and criminal accountancy of the Bush Administration’s new Federal Budget Proposal. In the Queen Anne News! I’m sure if he keeps writing those devastating editorials, it’ll only be a matter of time before the New York Times recognizes their error in never returning his letters and offer him a position right away!
March 1st, 2006 at 1:09 am
The decline of local newspapers is one of the saddest things going, mine at home used to be a substantial broadsheet and now it’s just a skinny tabloid with hardly any news. I think it could all be related to the way we’re building ghastly suburbs (as you write about elsewhere) with no sense of community, just rows of executive hutches. (I live in one myself, so wish we lived in town, would do but for Mrs Red’s problem with parallel parking.) People just come home each evening and watch TV, or spend the evening driving their kids to and from things. No sense of belonging to a specific place, for the good and simple reason that it’s not a specific place. And therefore no need for a shared source of local news. Though if anyone threatens to build on the Green Belt (on the edge of which we’re at) people threaten blue murder. Property prices, see?
March 1st, 2006 at 2:39 am
We usually drag behind trends by about 10 years, so for now at least the local papers here are not too bad - all local news, no political rants. In fact I read them rather than the ones I have to pay for (the Scottish heritage?).
A recent local story for Mrs Red and with a connection to nin: Bystander notices a (new) Mini duck “head first” into a parking spot that some guy in a big Merc was just starting to reverse into, in the classic “parallel parking” way. Merc guy leans out of window, “What are you doing?”. Mini guy, “that’s what you can do in a small car, mate” (The Minis are especially good because they have almost no overhang beyond the wheels). Anyway, Merc guy settles behind wheel and reverses straight back into Mini, smashing the whole front in. Leans out of window. “That’s what you can do if you have plenty of money, mate”, and drives off. Aghast Mini guy casts about frantically “anyone get the rego?”, but all are too busy laughing.
Yes, it makes one feel a part of the community.
March 1st, 2006 at 5:14 am
The one great thing about local papers from an advertiser’s point of view is that they are the only paper that everyone gets their name in at some point or another, and this generates reader loyalty. Editorials about Chimpy Bushitler on the other hand don’t.
Tee hee on the Merc story. While my natural sympthies are always with the Mini driver, I hate beig pratted about with when I’m parking.
March 1st, 2006 at 9:38 am
After I saw the editorial, I was totally put off the newspaper. Flipped quickly through the real estate ads to see what was what and dropped it in the ad bin at Safeway. Paid fifty cents for the bloody thing as well. It makes no sense. He’s killing off half (well, not really) his readership. Instead of building community, he’s wrecking it.
Our local paper at home though is really good. Every one gets it. They even have a nice webpage with the archives on line forever and free, so far as I can tell. It’s fantastic. And the ads are much better. And with that paper all the locals really do get their name in it at least once.
Are you sure that Mini story isn’t an urban legend?
March 1st, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Well, it was sent in by the person who claims to have been the bystander. Have you heard the same story elsewhere?
March 1st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
No, but it’s very… Well that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes, for instance. And similar ones have floated around but in different cars and saying different things. The thing is, it’s one of those things that a lot of people would actually do, so they could all be true. I mean, stealing a man’s parking space is like …killing his dog or something. It’s serious.
March 1st, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Wishful thinking is at the root of a hell of a lot of Urban Legends. Speaking of which, I hate it that Snopes.com got that name. It needs to be a tackier site to live up to that handle.
I’m thinking of having my name changed from HalfEmpty to Montgomery Ward Snopes.
March 2nd, 2006 at 12:02 am
Not to HalfFull?
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:41 am
I always think of Half as being VeryFull. Precisely what of is rather more difficult to define, but I wish you could buy it in bottles.