Monday, October 8, 2007

Media Responsibility

Simon asks sensibly what we can do to interest the Ithaca Journal in covering our town. It seems that I'm often arguing with them about their role. For a long time, they would not cover any event they considered strictly partisan, which extended to failing to cover our requests for candidates. Now, under a new editor, they've backed off that somewhat. They will mention a call for candidates, and they will talk about things that have already happened; for example, our recent TCDC meeting where we re-elected the executive committee. They will list meet-the-candidates events as long as they seem open to the public, which I think is fair. They will publish letters to the editor even when the number seems lopsided in favor of one candidate.

But they have nearly stopped covering the hinterlands, except via their "towns" freelance reporters, who tend to cover the social or religious rather than the political or legislative. It's a serious problem, although it may be worse for other towns than for ours. We still have two weeklies, and we have the Cortland Standard. However, the Standard won't deliver to us, because we're outside their delivery radius. All I can do is to keep an eye on their fairly poor website, which includes the top three or four stories in each edition, or to pick up papers at Eckerd/Rite Aid in the village (which, luckily for me, often holds up to a weeks' worth).

LATER: Well, this isn't likely to help one single bit.

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