By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 10, 2023 | Some of your friends may be intent on telling you that our United States government is in danger of failing. They list being too liberal, or being too conservative, and other far-out theories. Take your pick.
But there is a dangerous development in our country that could imperil our nation as never before. If this happens, our country’s downfall will be a failure of the business and professional community, not the voters, nor the politicians.
All around the country, too many communities do not have an essential element of our democracy that we have known before: independent newspapers and other media reporting on, watching and keeping tabs on local public officials. That’s because more of the press operations are going out of business, or have shrunk so much in scope that they can no longer afford to cover their community as they have in the past.
Some 200 of the nation’s 3,143 counties do not have a newspaper. An additional 1,449 counties, ranging in size from several hundred residents to more than a million, have only one newspaper, often a weekly. The University of North Carolina School of Journalism says that “Seventy percent – 1,300 – of the newspapers that closed or merged were in metro areas. Their demise leaves a news vacuum for many of America’s suburbs and urban neighborhoods, where residents have historically relied on community weeklies to keep them informed about the most pressing hyperlocal issues.” In Georgia, 12 counties have no newspaper.
We see a diminished press here in Gwinnett. Where our county once had a robust seven-day-a-week newspaper, the thin-but-still going Gwinnett Daily Post is down to two days a week. And the Atlanta newspaper is a ghost of its former self, seldom having detailed governmental local coverage of Gwinnett’s million people.
How about the 16 cities of Gwinnett? We suspect that in the last year, only one or two cities have seen a reporter at their regular meetings. The newspapers are simply ignoring the 16 cities.
What happens in such circumstances? It’s not so much that shenanigans are taking place. But for sure, the doors are wide open for such!
Now for the latest. The AJC will no longer have a reporter at Gwinnett County Commission meetings. As they have sometimes in the past, the newspaper apparently will follow at the streaming meeting or later check the recording of that session.
We understand that the Gwinnett Daily Post has also not always covered commission meetings in person.
As one guy put it: “That means a reporter will not be present to ask a commissioner to clarify a statement, or what he meant by his comment. It amounts to an incomplete reporting.” Another editor tells us that a value of attending meetings in person is generating other story ideas.
Reporters’ coverage of such meetings brings tremendous impact, since the reporter has the background to understand complicated topics, and interpret the developments for the readers. Try to get that from streaming, or online! It’s not the same. You need the back-and-forth between the elected official and the press.
But having no reporter in the room? Poor Ben Franklin, Horace Greely, Ralph McGill, Gene Patterson and Bill Shipp must be looking down and shaking their heads in disappointment and consternation.
Even since our country began, the press has sought transparency in government, calling for open meetings.
And now the press is failing to live up to its obligation.
So it’s not an insurrection, nor a government eating its own kind that is happening. It’s a struggling press which has lost revenue to the Internet. God help us out of this abyss.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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