I'm catching up on the National Council of State Legislatures blog, The Thicket, and came across a great note on the decreasing number of reporters covering state legislatures ("Bigger issues, fewer reports," by Gene Rose 2/14)
This excerpt caught my eye:
As journalists leave the Capitol, there is a void. There probably won't be a public clamor to fill that void, but there are two sectors that I believe will attempt to do so. The first is government employees (e.g. press secretaries, public information officers) using new social media tools to try to keep the public informed. The second is by concerned citizens, or political action groups, who decide to form their own news bureaus.
The first sector can't be counted on for any unbiased news. I guess bloggers would fit into that second sector. We are wonderful, don't get me wrong, and fill a great niche, covering items that the media usually won't, smaller or less "interesting" races, but we are not the equivalent of a full time, trained news staff. Most of us also make no pretense of not being biased. Sure, the mainstream media has biases as well, but it is a sad day when we lose state legislature coverage. The recent cuts at the Philadelphia newspapers, on top of previous cuts, are most distressing.
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