It all may fail

By Lou Grant | Mar 04, 11:41 PM

Going local may not work. Editorial cuts are being noticed in news coverage even as the appetite for news grows, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times by Thomas S Mulligan and James Rainey. The article by Mulligan and Rainey quotes a Project for Excellence in Journalism report that says citizen journalists have stepped into the breach, but are not producing the "meat-and-potatoes coverage" needed.

A wide ranging article that takes on three of today's myths for growing newspaper audiences, Mulligan and Rainey find examples of the newest fad, going local, that are failing, causing the sponsoring newspapers to cut staffs just like their more global relatives. Then, they find politicians disturbed by the lack of coverage.

Consolidation of news, they point out, has thinned coverage of sports and government. "Where six or eight reporters once routinely covered the Board of Supervisors and county agencies, now there are only two or three on the county beat," they quote a political spokesman as saying. "There is the paper there, but there is no substantive understanding of the… beat anymore."

Tagged: Los Angeles Times