|
|
|
Disappearing Act at the Capitol
|
Business New Haven
10/16/2000
By: BNH
|
When the state's leading newspaper decides it will no longer cover the State Capitol, there is trouble in River City.
And, believe it or not, that's exactly the fine kettle of fish we're confronted with since the Hartford Courant decided in August to “broaden” its coverage by removing its last reporter from the full-time Capitol beat.
Not long ago, the Courant had four reporters roaming the halls of the Capitol and Legislative Office Building, where the drudge work of democracy is performed day in and day out. Now the paper has no full-time presence at the Capitol.
It is an irony that it was Don O. Noel Jr., the Courant's longtime political columnist, who made this development widely known by writing about it in the Manchester Journal-Inquirer last month, later reprinted in the Hartford Business Journal. Noel had obtained a memo from Courant assistant managing editor Michael Regan outlining the changes in coverage.
“We are changing the way we look at state politics and government reporting,” Regan wrote, “with the goal of broadening our coverage beyond the confines of the Capitol.” He went on to explain that the two reporters formerly at the Capitol full-time “can expect to spend a significant part of their time in the newsroom as part of a three-person team that could expand to include investigative, specialty and other reporters as necessary.”
Noel minces no words about what this means: “'Broadening' means 'thinning,'” he says. “Without full-time eyes and ears, the paper's basic reporting role is diminished. It's another step on a well-worn path: emulating television's coverage of government, going after the splashy story and letting someone else do the hard work.”
One of the broadcast media's dirty little secrets is that many stories 'covered' by local television and radio news operations are stories they discovered…by reading the morning newspaper. Then they go out, shoot film or collect sound cuts, and regurgitate this information as their own.
That's just the way it is. But what if the newspaper itself is no longer covering vital areas of the news, or covering it more superficially. Where are we consumers supposed to turn then?
“There is no substitute,” Noel writes, “for reporters with time to listen who stitch together snippets of information, go back to tiresome official documents, become familiar with details and figure out what's really going on.”
It seems as though Connecticut's newspaper of record has finally figured out what the local TV news honchos figured out a long time ago: stories about crimes that affect very few sell better than stories about government, whose actions affect everybody.
It's as though the Washington Post decided it could no longer be troubled to cover endless (and mind-numbing) congressional hearings, the White House or the Supreme Court.
If we can't rely on the media to watchdog what government officials are doing with our money, who can we rely on? The answer, of course, is no one.
“The state's newspaper of record has decided that it can't afford to do what used to be its job,” concludes Noel. “The era of solid reporting apparently has ended.”
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
