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May 27, 2009 07:51 PM UTC

The Shrinking Press Corps at the State Capitol

  • 3 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Joe Hanel of The Durango Herald laments the small press presence at the State Capitol for I Want My Rocky:

I’ve been hung over too much this year. It’s not because I suddenly developed a drinking habit. But we have a tradition in the state Capitol press corps of buying drinks for colleagues who are leaving their jobs, voluntarily or not. And this year, I’ve had to say goodbye to too many people who are leaving the business against their will.

The American Journalism Review just released its survey of the population of state capitol reporters and found some predictable bad news. AJR’s survey isn’t perfect. For example, it missed me, a correspondent for The Durango Herald. And it doesn’t take into account the seasoned reporters who cover legislatures less than full-time or as freelancers. But its overall finding of a 30 percent decline in capitol reporters since 2003 rings true. It’s at least that bad in Colorado. Hence, my hangovers…

…All this adds up to a loss of decades of experience in the press corps. It’s not just the lack of warm bodies at the press table. It’s the lack of authority. I’ve been on the beat for four years, and it wasn’t until this year that I finally felt like I knew what I was talking about, at least some of the time. I’ve become a better journalist because I work in the same office as other good reporters. The coverage in  The Durango Herald will suffer from the loss of John and Charles and Jeremy and Marianne and K.C. I can’t tell you how yet, but I know that sometime next year, I’m going to have a question on the Department of Agriculture, I’ll turn to ask K.C., and she won’t be there. I’ll spend hours finding an answer I could have gotten in minutes, and meanwhile, other reporting will just go undone.

Every reporter pulled off the island disrupts the workings of the whole tribe. Meanwhile, the Capitol will go on running. The various tribes of politicians and lobbyists are doing just fine, as populous and healthy as ever.

We couldn’t agree more.

Comments

3 thoughts on “The Shrinking Press Corps at the State Capitol

  1. And even more so since our pols community hasn’t seen fit to comment.

    Losing the Statehouse press corps means we’ll be faced with our “news” coming from such luminaries as the ideological blogs, with little substance and not even an effort toward objectivity.

    The chatter here is built on stories done by real reporters. Once they’re all gone, I fear for how our country.

    Call me a downer. Tonight, I am.

    You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone.

  2. The news won’t be coming soley from the blogsphere; it will be coming from press releases from various elected officials and government agencies…..far, far, worse.,,,,and, of course, talk radio.

    A note about the “dominance” of talk radio by one political party.  I think that the repubs have a brilliant strategy to regain power….their focus is not national; it is local.  So the collapse of newspapers all over the country leaves a void. repub talk radio fills that void and its influence is increased on the local level.  How did anyone know what was happening in the state legislature?.well repubs were on the air, locally, with repub state legislators for hours ….successfully defeating  dem bills and labeling the dem agenda as socialist…etc..worked real well IMHO

    The repubs posture nationally; but plan locally…state legislatures are their target….wiley coyotes….and the other plan is to promote an states right agenda which turn power back to states…STOP…I don’t think that the agenda will be successful in that goal and I don’t think that repubs really want that…..what they want is the control of state legislatures….and that is political agenda is designed to help them .

  3. What are the Democratic majority going to do with 30% fewer people fawning over them and kissing their asses??  Oh my, what a tragedy.

    Perhaps if the press corps had been doing their jobs their readership wouldn’t have dropped off so much.

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