By Hereward Bradley, IWANTMYROCKY.COM
As newspapers make heavy cuts in staffing and budgets, or in some cases even fold, a debate has caught fire within the industry on whether the recent decline in print media will allow government corruption to flourish. Some journalists have gone so far as to suggest that the loss of newspapers, and the elimination of the traditional watchdog role newspapers have played, threatens the very foundation of democracy. While I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to give such a lofty position to newspapers, the fear of losing the “eyes” that traditionally have watched over government agencies is very real.
One could make a good argument, given the recent spike in layoffs and newspaper closures, as to whether newspapers could duplicate the efforts of The Washington Post in the early 1970s when it allowed two young reporters the time and resources to flush out corruption that eventually cost Richard Nixon his presidency. Other than instincts and a nagging feeling that something was amiss, there was no guarantee that the amount of time and effort by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to dig into the Watergate break-in would end in one of the biggest political stories of the 20th century. To put it another way, it ultimately could have fizzled out as a dead-end story. But the Post had the resources to pursue its suspicions. Today, even the Post, which has gone through serious staff cuts during the past year, would find it harder to justify such efforts.
Let’s face it, good journalism is expensive, and expensive is not part of the vocabulary in newspaper boardrooms. The Watergate example is just the tip of the iceberg. On the state and local level, hometown newspapers are slashing budgets and cutting staffs to survive. Closer to home, the Pueblo Chieftain informed its bureau chief in Denver that he would be laid off at the end of the legislative session. And the Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver’s two daily newspapers, folded at the end of February after nearly 150 years of publication. The Denver Post, the city’s other daily paper, has tightened its belt with staff and budget cuts.
At a recent conference in Princeton, N.J., on “The Newspaper Crisis,” it was pointed out that fewer New Jersey reporters are covering local and state governments, thus opening the door to allow corruption to flourish.
“Who will perform the monitoring and investigative reporting that has traditionally been provided by newspapers? What happens when they disappear?” NewJerseyNewsroom.com quoted Richard Keevey, director of the Princeton University Policy Research Institute. Keevey said online sites that have emerged do not currently have the resources to produce good investigative reporting.
David B. Offer, a retired executive editor at the Kennebec Journal in Maine, wrote this month that some of the roles traditionally filled by newspapers could shift to others, including television, bloggers and Internet news sites. “But most of these alternate sources lack the resources – money, manpower and experience – required for serious journalism. “
And then there is something called trust. Offer tells of his time as a reporter at the Hartford Courant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when sources, both in the agencies and the community, came to trust him after he spent several years on local and state beats. The sources gave him tips on where to look for stories. That in turn, Offer says, led to investigative projects that revealed information readers needed to know but officials did not want to disclose.
“All this took time; hours, sometimes days reading budgets, comparing them with budgets from prior years; reading proposals and reports and comparing them with budgets, talking to staff members and commissions,” Offer said. “I don’t think that would be possible today.”
Again, deep and time-consuming journalism is expensive. As newspapers decline in number at a growing rate, and editors give less time to beat reporters to do their jobs well, one can only wonder how many pubic officials’ driveways and patios are being paved by county workers at taxpayer expense; how many contracts are being steered to relatives or pals of commissioners or councilors; how many officials are tapping budgets for personal gain. It happens, but will the taxpayer find out? Until newspapers come up with a new financial model to once again become profitable and healthy, one can only ask how many corrupt officials are being given a free pass.
Hereward Bradley is a former Rocky Mountain News copy editor
Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters
