A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Twenty years ago, a reporter covering the Montana Legislature needed to be in Helena. Today, with committee hearings and floor sessions broadcast by television and streaming video, with bills and reports available on the internet, and cellphones, reporters can get their stories without leaving their newsrooms. Sometimes, that works pretty well.
Therefore, it’s not hard to imagine some beancounter at Lee Enterprises slapping his forehead and shouting, “Hell! We can write these stories from home. That office in Helena wastes money. We’ll shut it down, send those high priced reporters packing, and bring on J-school interns if we need more help during the next session. We’ll dateline the stories Helena, and our readers won’t miss Mike and Chuck.”
It’s long distance journalism, we may be condemned to a lot of it in 2017, and it has its limitations.
I report and comment on legislative events from my home office, using streaming video, email instead of a telephone, and conduct my research Izzy Stone style over the internet. That approach works for me, a part-time blogger, but it’s not a substitute for a full-time reporter’s prowling the capitol, buttonholing legislators, chatting-up staff, or crashing a secret rump caucus of legislative mischief makers.
And the Lee chain may decide to do something worse: treating the session as local instead of statewide news, leaving coverage to the Helena Independent Record.
In college, I took a class in community journalism, focusing on small dailies, weeklies, and publishing economics as well as the practical and political aspects of reporting in small towns. Successful small newspapers, I learned, recognized that the press was free only when the newspaper was profitable, and intended to be profitable. A good newspaper was a profitable business with a socially responsible newsroom. It’s mission statement would have been “a profit with honor.”
Lee pays bonuses to executives who lose the company money while closing its state bureau in Helena and sending packing reporters who were paid well. If Lee’s mission statement tells the truth, it will read, “no profit, no honor.”