Kansas City Star Public Editor Derek Donovan received some interesting criticism from a reader who feels the newspaper should focus more on local political races rather than devote considerable time and effort on national election topics.
It’s a good question, particularly with some newspapers across the country are now saying they won’t endorse candidates in the Presidential race since, as one editor put it, people can learn as much from CNN.
It also should be noted that newspapers such as the KC Star have dramatically cut their editorial staffs in the past few years. With fewer people it would seem logical to focus more locally.
“(Information on local races) is the kind of information that newspapers exist to provide and you are doing a terrible job of it,” noted the Star reader. “Why so much sports and nothing about what really matters? Why so much national coverage and no coverage of what’s going on in the state house? Please stop getting your cues from the national news and start being our local paper.”
Donovan says it is a regular criticism he hears as public editor.
“It’s a daily occurrence right now for me to hear from readers who want The Star to focus on the stories the cable news channels hammer endlessly — the hearings over who’s “responsible” for the Libyan embassy attack, the jabs and counter-punches from the major party candidates’ campaign trail and the like,” says Donovan.
“But this reader identifies something that pretty much every regional media company such as The Star takes for granted these days. Yes, the media has exploded into millions of sources these days, but macro and micro. Almost all newspaper companies have turned their spotlights on their local communities. Those that keep presences in Washington, D.C., (like The Star) do so for those journalists to report on how national affairs impact their respective papers’ local interests. But I hear most often from readers who don’t want to read that, especially in their papers. They want The Star to cover the same topics they’ve been seeing on TV.
What Donovan didn’t discuss was many local newspaper reporters and editors have major egos and feel they are uniquely qualified to discuss national topics despite often counting on the same Internet sources as readers for their information.
That might be the key reason for such a major focus on national issues rather than issues closer to home.
VALUE OF LOCAL NEWS
And Dad’s reminder to me when I was about to get into the newspaper business myself was this: “All you have to sell is local news.” How true! Of course, no one subscribing to our small-town weekly was expecting to find any world, national or state news in it, but in the case of The Star the paper has to walk a fine line between being overly national in its focus and overly local. I do agree with the reader mentioned above that there’s far too much sports in The Star, but it’s going to be rather difficult for the paper to please everyone over the long run.
Given a choice, however, I’d rather see The Star “error” on the side of local news as opposed to national news. It’s a pretty safe bet that most readers have access to either TV or the Internet and can get the top world and national stories through one or the other and likely both.
NO ARROGANCE IN NEWSROOM
… and furthermore: this still being National Newspaper Week, I’ll go so far as to say that we’ve got some local reporters and editors here (in the Kansas City area) who need to lose the “God’s gift to journalism” tag and don the cloak of humility as they go about their duties. There is absolutely no place for arrogance in the News Room. As others have observed previously, we become wise only when we acknowledge just how little we really know.