[MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Soney eBook reader: $349.00

[Tish Grier]

> > For some, the transition involves putting down
> roots in a community, 
> > developing more interest in local taxes, road
> repairs, zoning cases, 
> > schools and sewage problems. . . > 
> The problem in many smaller cities is that the local
> newspapers don't do 
> a very good job of covering local public affairs. ..

Putting down roots in a community is *very* important
for cultivating concern about what's happening.  One
thing that might help local papers is to cultivate
journalists who are what colleges would call
"non-traditional age" who are interested in these
things rather than looking for the ambitious young
person to stay in the sleepy small town....

It often seems that adults look to youth to save
whatever is ailing rather than looking within their
own ranks to do something about the problem.  

Yet the problem is also as Rob notes:  the papers
don't do a good job of covering the local scene.  The
major paper for the Hampden county region of Western
Mass often runs a high percentage of wire service
stories, a few local stories, and very little
state-level stories.  Still, there is much better
hyper-local coverage in the three small free papers
for Chicopee than in the larger paper that covers the
county.  Much of the local coverage is lost among the
wire service reprints.

Funny thing is, if the wire story is, say, a repring
to a story in the NYTimes, I often go online, back to
the orginal source, to read the entire story--the
paper prints abridged versions.  It feels like the
wire stories are filler, as if they are some form of
advertising, rather than news.  

> 
> > So how do we get a younger generation into the
> tent at 21 if their 
> > parents didn't bring them up making the
> association between newspapers 
> > and "being informed"? 
> 

This may be why so many young people are more
interested in what's online an what they can download
than what's in print.  If we look to the age group
that are now the parents of young people, we might
find that the shift away from newspapers started
before the advent of the internet.  

As I've maintained, there are differences between the
Viet-Nam war-era boomers (those who got drafted) and
the post-Viet Nam war era boomers (those for whom the
draft no longer existed--the last 5 years of the
boom).  This group of "straddlers" were the generation
that said "I want my M-TV!" and for whom the first
"Rock the Vote" campaign was designed to reach.  There
was awareness back in '92 that a large sector of young
people weren't being reached through traditional
media.     

> 
> Or maybe use the narrative techniques all good
> fiction writers use. 
> Allow and encourage colorful writing. Build stories
> to strong 
> conclusions instead of letting them trail off,
> inverted pyramid-style. 
> If those Harry Potter novels were constructed like a
> typical, modern 
> newspaper story, how well would they sell?


But can this be done with the very dry stuff that
comes out of town council meetings without possibly
offending someone on the town council (if, perhaps, it
is remarked that said member is wearing an awful tie
or sweating profusely.)?  

Town council members *might* put up with this from
someone who's not an "official" journalist, but will
they be as forgiving to someone who's on the local
newspaper's staff?  Out here in W. Mass, where things
are *very* conservative, writing something of a "color
commentary" *might* get a reporter in hot water (that
is, unless an editor is willing to stand by that
reporter.) 

Tish G. 
http://media.corante.com
http://spap-oop.blogspot.com



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com