Whenever I write to my local paper, I imagine I’m writing to those fur-capped Wicked-Witch-of-the-West palace guards.
After all, they must READ their own paper, and news is news, and despite sometimes running those Rameriz cartoons. and stone-age columnists, and twice endorsing His Petulancy for Prez, SURELY they can see the in-frigging-credible mess W has made.
And surely, if anyone ever threw a bucket of water on W, and he melted, there would be involuntary cheers throughout the newsroom/guardhouse.
But for now, they are the guards, and one must speak to them tactfully. So when the Editor of the Columbus Dispatch asked for suggestion for improving the paper, I took the diplomatic route, and decided to make good use of an under-appreciated resource here at DKOS--Jotter’s list of high-impact diaries.
(Maybe some of you could write similar letters to your local newspapers--or otherwise use Jotter's diaries to recruit others to read DKOS.)
Here's what I wrote:
Dear Editor:
In your column a few weeks ago you asked for reader suggestions on what to change in your paper.
I did not take the offer lightly, and I have given it a lot of thought.
In general, what I would ask you to change...not much.
I think you do a good job of reporting the facts and digging up the truth, and I am delighted with your excellent science coverage.
Personally, I would like to see more business and less sports. And personally, I don’t much like celebrity news, and what I might call "Laci Peterson-ism," which is pseudo news inflated by other media, and ending up on your pages. But I won’t ask you to change any of that. I recognize that if it sells papers, it keeps you in business to report the real news.
But I did find one thing I might suggest you do: Listen more to the progressive sources.
And I don’t mean just picking stories that reflect progressive values. What I mean is putting your ear to the rails where progressive (and I would argue, reality-based) news comes from.
I’m not saying your are being unfair. I find the same problem with NPR. You (and NPR) are good at picking up on stories and straightening out the facts, no matter where they come from. The problem is you (and NPR) are picking up a lot from the right, and little from the progressive side.
For example, here in Columbus we have Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and six right-wing radio stations (WLGN, WRFD, WTVN, WTDA, WLW, WYTS--and more with a better radio). For the last year, we had not one notable progressive news source--at least until we recently got WVKO AM.
When a right-wing talking point or news item is released, it arrives immediately. On the progressive side, it takes a long time to get noticed--if it ever does.
I might say you are missing half the news and, unfortunately, I think the only way to remedy this is to be pro-active, and that means going to the web.
I know that can be techno-daunting, but I think I can offer a simple, 1-minute-a-day method for doing this: Use the "High Impact Diaries" meta-diary on DKOS.
DKOS is the top progressive blog. It offers both regular "front page" posters here: http://www.dailykos.com/ , and a continual stream of volunteer posters here: http://www.dailykos.com/... . But trying to keep up with all of those has been called "sipping from a fire hose." And it is time consuming.
But one diarist compiles a daily list of high-impact diaries (according to reader ratings), and posts it here: http://jotter.dailykos.com/
You simply click that link, find the last diary of high-impact diaries (at the top), click its "read more" and look at what thousand of DKOS readers have paid the most attention to.
And I think your newspaper will benefit from this, since much of this is not opinion, but real news collected from hard news sources around the world.
For example top dairy for Dec 29 was "Solar Power Breakthrough," telling how solar cells are now being manufactured that produce electricity more cheaply than coal. I think this is big news, and you won’t see it on Fox or hear about it on right-wing radio.
Time and again, DKOS has covered such issues as bird flu, peak oil, and the mortgage market meltdown, sometimes years before it made its way to the front pages of mainstream media.
(In fact the #2 high impact diary for Dec 29 is a score card for economic predictions on DKOS: http://www.dailykos.com/... .)
So please consider checking out the daily high impact diaries. And I don’t mind if you ignore all the opinion and Republican scandal pieces and just look at the news and science and economics.
You might find something worthy of your attention--something more important than Laci Peterson.
Thanks