SamPratt.com

How our docile local press
undermines democracy

by Sam Pratt

The following article appears in the current issue of Our Town: The Columbia County Quarterly, and will appear here in four installments over the next two weeks. Links to the previous two installments: Part I | Part II | Part III

What will local media look like in another ten years?

In September 2009, a Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Akst began, “If you think your local newspaper is bad, I’m here to tell you that life without one is worse.” Akst built a modern house in northern Dutchess, where a news vacuum has been created by the closure of several papers.

He held up the Register-Star as a model: imperfect, yet vital.

“Nobody will mistake the Hudson and Catskill newspapers for the Washington Post,” Akst wrote, noting that:

The Register-Star has just four reporters, one photographer, and a three-person sports staff shared with the Daily Mail, where the printing occurs. A network of freelancers helps by covering small towns, but there is no copy desk, and editing is scant. Cost-cutting has reduced publishing frequency to five days a week from seven, and in a pinch, publisher Roger Coleman has found himself shoveling snow outside the office (where a neighbor once tried to tip him). His administrative assistant is also human-resources director and classified-ad manager. The offices, on Hudson’s antique and gallery studded Warren Street, are frankly a dump...

Nonetheless, as a local media orphan, Akst concluded that Columbians were still blessed. He told me via e-mail, “The intensely local Register-Star, half-starved though it may be, is infinitely better than no paper at all. Low pay and high turnover have plagued small papers at least since I started my career at the Hudson Dispatch in 1978, where the same issues prevailed.…Ideally, a paper like the Register-Star would be owned by its editor, who stays put, knows the community, nurtures talent, etc. Unfortunately, such people don't have the scratch. The challenge, then, is for outsiders to find a way to keep these institutions alive in the face of harsh economics and—let’s face it—reader indifference.”

Can the Register-Star and Columbia Paper survive? They now face competition from brightening stars on the horizon: blogs and social networks. Rapidly-proliferating and increasingly user-friendly services allow ordinary people to report their own news and announce their own opinions, without having to jump through the hoops of establishment media.

At minimum, such pipsqueaks and upstarts can serve to keep the bigger print bullies more honest and accountable. From Blogspot to Facebook, anyone can set up shop as a reporter, by accident (you’re the first to snap a phone pic of a tornado whipping across local cornfields; you post it to Twitter) or by intention (you set up a Tumblr account to watchdog the local Zoning Board of Appeals). Meanwhile, pretty much every town has at least one Yahoo or Google Group, where people trade scraps of local news, debate issues and wonder where to find a reliable plumber.

Columbia County is now enjoying a new wave of local event and news aggregators, such as Christy Collins’ CoCoToDo or Will Pflaum’s WikiCoCo News, which collect info from many area sources and make it available in one location. More ambitiously, Bob Sacks’ Copake Chronicle e-newsletter, and Carole Osterink’s Gossips of Rivertown blog in Hudson, are attempting to do more than react to existing media. They aim to break news of their own. This is the big challenge: becoming a primary source, rather than a secondary or tertiary one.

There are limitations to what one person can achieve, but already some of these sites are beating other papers to the punch. Osterink’s site is often updated two, three or four times daily, with an alert for each posting blasted out to fans via email. Largely focused on planning and preservation, roughly half of her postings are original reports on local meetings, or observations about changes to Hudson’s built environment. The others link to, or comment on articles which appeared elsewhere.

By and large, Gossips transcends mere kibbitzing on professional work, for which bloggers are often criticized. An example of Osterink’s growing influence: When Hudson Common Council President Don Moore attempted to deny the public a much-anticipated look at the City’s new Waterfront Plan, Osterink managed to publish leaked excerpts within a few days, which finally forced Moore to cave in to public pressure and release the documents.

As both a former Alderman and a publishing veteran, Osterink has lived here for some twenty years, becoming deeply involved with causes such as Historic Hudson and the Hudson Area Library. She brings to bear a wealth of surprising local knowledge, informed by experience of the world beyond her base on Allen Street. She’s not “provincial,” but her narrow focus on the 12534 zip allows the blog to develop a limited but intensely interested audience.

Often asked to run again for Common Council, her response is now invariably: “I’m having too good a time with Gossips, and wouldn’t want to be compromised by any perception of conflict of interest between roles.” (Friends are glad for Carole, but wish more Council members had her ethics.)

The immediacy of the internet, including social networks and email loops, which allow citizens to trade tips and refine research in a manner which mimics a newsroom, is now aided by the affordability of gadgets like smartphones, HD video cameras, and tablets. The barriers to entry are falling. At this blog, I’ve managed to dig up and break a few stories missed by area press, such as Mid-Hudson Cablevision’s bizarre decision to spurn a $3.5 million grant they’d applied for and received, to expand broadband Internet and cable to hard-to-reach “last-mile” customers.

The Register and Daily Mail picked up the story later that week, without crediting my research.

Sam Pratt is a writer, web designer, activist, consultant, and Contributing Writer of Our Town. Formerly a writer for Esquire, New York, SPIN, MediaWeek, and some two dozen other national publications, he was co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of Hudson from 1999 to 2005. He lives in Taghkanic, works in Hudson, blogs here at sampratt.com, and recently launched clovr.net, which gathers headlines and commentary from Columbia County news, event and blog sites.