Drew Cline got the “organization” right – just got the “newspaper” bit wrong.
Oh, and add this, too: “Cameras at the State House”. See the bottom of this post for both as this is a bit long.
The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy just send out another email missive and while I agree with Drew Cline’s assessment of the actual problem, I have a better solution than just throwing money at media outlets whose drift Leftward is increasing faster (at the very bottom). First, the problem as he sees it (reformatted, emphasis mine):
Reading through the state budget passed and vetoed last week, I was struck by how many provisions had gone either unreported or lightly reported. The people’s elected representatives had just passed a $13 billion budget, and the people, excepting a handful of insiders, had little idea what was in it.
For example, the budget:
- raised the tobacco-purchase age from 18 to 21 and changed the tobacco tax to a nicotine tax so the state could legally tax e-cigarettes (which sometimes contain nicotine but never tobacco);
- repealed the state law prohibiting state funding for abortions;
- raised this year’s business tax rates and applied the higher rates to taxes already paid this year, effectively imposing a retroactive tax increase on New Hampshire businesses.
It isn’t just the budget. Whole portions of the legislative session passed in relative darkness. In the last year, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy’s email newsletter has broken several political news stories. There was no media conspiracy to hide the news. Too often, there simply was no media. In some newsworthy committee meetings, the Bartlett Center had the only non-lobbyist with a pen and a publication there. Other times, we were the only ones questioning government officials about stories that weren’t the biggest topics of the week.
Our government watchdogs have been forced by collapsing profits to lay off the reporters who once kept the public informed. In their absence, the public knows not what transpires in its own state capital.
At the turn of this century, the press room at the State House was full, with several organizations sending multiple reporters. Even smaller papers like Foster’s Daily Democrat had a capital reporter. If you sent the press room a dozen doughnuts today, reporters would fight over who got to take home the leftovers.
With so few journalists, legislators are doing their business with minimum scrutiny. The biggest issues get covered, but thinly compared to the past, and many issues go unreported. It’s worse in cities and towns. Reporters, once commonly seen sitting in the back rows of public meetings or roaming the halls of town offices, have gone the way of the shoe shine boy.
True – yet when I have been at the statehouse, I see a lot of issue advocacy groups reporting on that is going on in proposed legislation and votes – or what is not happening. I then see (or can find out) what they saw by using a search engine. Methinks that Drew has forgotten that the disruptive force that is the Internet hasn’t finished with the process of disintermediation that is happening to the news industry. After all, GraniteGrok does break stories from time to time, we opine on their antics, and we do “citizen journalism” with our cameras and allowing readers to determine for themselves the value of such legislation on their own lives directly without the impingement of third party voices. But we’re just a rag-tag gaggle of volunteer Groksters. But we do journalism and opining. We are part of that distermediation.
Sure, reporting is necessary and needed for an informed electorate. Less reporting is bad. DIFFERENT ways of doing that reporting isn’t. And this is why, in part, Drew goes afield:
The results are self-evident. Governing magazine reported in 2015 that dwindling media coverage of state government led to more pack reporting (reporters covering the same big stories the same way) and more click-driven reporting. Recent studies show that less media scrutiny leads to higher government spending. In a 2018 study, professors at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at 1,596 newspapers in 1,266 counties from 1996 to 2015. They found that municipal borrowing costs increased in communities that lost newspapers.
“You can actually see the financial consequences that have to be borne by local citizens as a result of newspaper closures,” a co-author said. A similar study in Japan found that an increase in newspaper market share was associated with a drop in public works spending. Other studies have tied newspaper losses to reductions in voter participation and civic engagement. Wallet Hub just ranked New Hampshire the most patriotic state, with civic participation being a top factor. If we abandon local journalism, we should expect that ranking to fall.
I disagree with that last assumption – like a lot of current and former journalists, he thinks too highly, I believe, of that profession. Or rather better put, getting paid for following what one learned in elementary school (at least that’s when I learned in my English classes): who, what, where, where, why – and how. With the figurative explosion of niched interest blogsites and Facebook and Twitter and Gab and WeMe and Codias and Parlez and….well you get the idea…people are talking to friends and family more and more. MUCH more to the point that the MSM is now saying “BUT WHAT ABOUT US?!?!?!?!?”.
They’ve lost their jobs as “flappers”. No, not the 1920s’s “hipsters” of the day – those that flapped large fans to keep the royalty cooler in the heat. They also acted as the gatekeepers to those royal ears as well. Well, they are gone – replaced by other technologies. So, too, are journalists (yeah, “go learn to code” like they derisively told the coal workers that both Hillary and Obama wanted to kill their industry). Which makes this next part, well, amusing:
More journalists make government more accountable and citizens more engaged. Some conservative readers might counter, “But not if all the journalists are liberal!”
Media bias is a problem, but ending bias by killing newspapers is like ending Pledge of Allegiance protests by abolishing the NFL.
It’s better to have an active news media, even biased, than to have no one keeping an eye on government.
Absolutely wrong. Reporters aren’t reporters anymore, Drew. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit spawned a Right Blogosphere meme with “Democrats with bylines”. It’s no longer the 5Ws and an H – it’s “The Narrative Reporting Era”. While the newspaper field is getting cut to ribbon by the Internet, they’ve done themselves NO good by leaving the straight up reporting behind and mixing in some reporting with a lot more opining in their articles.
And then still trying to tell us they are totally unbiased. Trump isn’t the reason that “Fake News!” is a thing nowadays – I’ve been reporting on the biased MSM for years. It just now, with the plethora of Conservative sites that have poked holes in the MSM bubble and hubris that ordinary people are seeing it for themselves.
After a while, while would a Conservative want to continue to pay for “reporting” that is constantly shoving a philosophical shiv into our ribs? They’ve done it to themselves with this switch in journalistic philosophy and basically told half their audience “screw you”, and worse “we hate your guts”. Might you think THAT has more than a smidge to do with the escalating drop in stock prices and reader subscriptions? And with this:
Media bias is a problem, but ending bias by killing newspapers is like ending Pledge of Allegiance protests by abolishing the NFL.
is a horrible analogy. Or not – people don’t want to spend their money or their eyeball time on stuff that insults their basic values. And you’ve also given a good example of “reporting” that turns people like me away from it: it wasn’t about the Pledge that has infuriated people, it was taking a knee for “social justice” above what the American Flag stands for. I know, I’m one of those that doesn’t watch the NFL anymore. And now with the Betsy Ross flag incident (speaking of the Founding Fathers, below), we now know it was ALWAYS about the Flag and how best to further the Left’s Narrative of how bad of a country we have always been. You’re a smart guy, Drew, and I’m sure you read a lot of commentary on Colin and Nike’s Free Speech on this – and the backlash.
And this: “It’s better to have an active news media, even biased”. Sorry, absolutely wrong because in my humble opinion, bias news is WRONG news. Let me sum it up with just two words: Dan. Rather. Let me add three more to remind you: Real. Font. Experts.
So bad journalism is better than none? No, wrong premise – better journalism by MORE organizations – smaller and more focused and willing to admit their biases up front so readers KNOW what to expect. No. More. Lying.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask our Founding Fathers. During the American Revolution, reliable information was scarce and enormously valuable. In New Hampshire, patriot leaders constantly encouraged each other to read the newspapers.
Letters from New Hampshire’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence include the following:
- Josiah Bartlett to John Langdon, Sept. 30, 1776: “There is no news here, more than you will see in the publick prints.”
- William Whipple to John Langdon, July 8, 1776: “I must refer you to the papers for news.…”
- Matthew Thornton to Meshech Weare, Nov. 12, 1776: “For better and further information and news, I must refer you to the newspapers, and you won’t find more falsehood in them than is passing through this city.”
- William Whipple to John Langdon, June 10, 1776: “Colonel Bartlett sends you newspapers.”
Remember, too, Drew, that pamphleteers and newspapers were the technological disruptors of their day. I’m feeling confident that if they hadn’t existed, due to the early printing presses they used, we’d still be singing “God Save The Queen” and a bonnet isn’t something that is on some lady’s head.
And this is where Drew is stuck in the past – although he did use a better word (at least, at first):
Citizens cannot check government power if they abandon the organizations that expose what government is doing. This Independence Day weekend, commit a radical act of American patriotism. Subscribe to your local newspaper.
Organizations – times, they are achanging and Drew is stuck on only one aspect of it. EVERYONE is a journalist today – if they want to be one. One only has to carry out the 5Ws and H to be one. One doesn’t have to be paid, one doesn’t have to go to a central location to work, and one doesn’t have to be part of a large organizations because actual newspaper presses go for millions.
We’re part of that disintermediation, Drew – and so is your email blast and website. You, and we, with our blog sites can reach thousands of people with a fraction of the people that newspapers once need and without the capital outlay once needed.
Drew Cline got the “organization” right – just got the “newspaper” bit wrong. All that is needed is not the lure of a paycheck but a MOTIVATION to do it.
So folks, what to do? I have a simple answer: you want MORE news from a Consistent and Conservative outlook? Help us fund “Cameras at the State House“. Help us go fill that void and report back to you, in near real time, what the nitwits in Concord are doing to tell you how to live your lives instead of making sure Govt is staying, as much as possible, out of your lives.
Frankly, I just came up with that idea so things will have to be fleshed out but the idea is to allow you the ability to decide more for yourself FASTER and let your ELECTED (and therefore, ACCOUNTABLE) officials if they are on the straight and narrow or are going off the cliff.
Oh, that reminds me of that other project “Call to Action” page. Gotta do that, too, but both will complement each other.
