Bent: Media Not Covering Local News

Bent: Right now I could rattle off a half dozen front page stories that no media has even begun to track down. Take the S-R for instance, they have a newsroom 80 persons strong, and not peep in paper about the upcoming BNSF re-fueling depot hearings to see how well BNSF complied with their original conditional use permit. Requests for comments went out to public agencies over a month ago… That is powder-keg topic, with no coverage. Full post below .

Question: How well does the local media do in covering local news of importance to you?

I agree that we need a strong news media to keep democracy in check, but granting tax breaks under the guise of non-profit status isn’t going to help. If they can’t afford taxes, they are going tank no matter what…

The media needs to get back to its roots by reporting objective news and getting out of the crusader business, and the business of advocacy and influence. I am firm believer that if they could just do that, they would rebound immediately. But can that happen, without a complete meltdown? I doubt it.

If they would simply report what is happening in my community in way that I cannot get that information elsewhere, I will begin to subscribe again. Like it or not the Press model is working. I have to buy their paper periodically to get all of the information available on certain subjects. That’s stuff I can’t even get in the “regional” paper, which I believe should be more local.

Right now I could rattle off a half dozen front page stories that no media has even begun to track down.

Take the S-R for instance, they have a newsroom 80 persons strong, and not peep in paper about the upcoming BNSF re-fueling depot hearings to see how well BNSF complied with their original conditional use permit. Requests for comments went out to public agencies over a month ago… That is powder-keg topic, with no coverage.

How about the financial straights Spokane County is in… at a time when their entire tax base is getting gobbled up by the cities, they are expanding their service offerings with a new wastewater treatment plant that will cost hundereds of millions to build and they don’t have permission to use it yet. Granted, I’ve seen bits and pieces about that, but there is huge story to tell just below the surface… I would love to read what this situation could mean for the residents of Spokane County … especially in light of the jail bond they want to pass, as well. How far can the county go on its current pace, the information is out there, but no body is putting the pieces together.

It seems many journalists are just waiting for news to fall in their laps, and then they over kill it with coverage and ignore the hard work of developing a great stories that have tremendous value to their readership.

I suspect out of those eighty people in the S-R newsroom that a very disproportionate percentage of them are actually news gatherers. Instead, I’ll bet there are a lot of mid-level editors trying to delegate instead of pounding the pavement and working the phones…

BTW, my wife still buys the paper for the ads…she doesn’t look at ads online.