Slow news days
When I was invited to join this blog, I eagerly searched the local papers’ websites to catch up on the inner workings of New Britain, to see who’s doing what, my head already spinning with that same adrenaline that got me through many deadlines in the days I was covering New Britain for The Herald. I’ve missed being a part of New Britain.
Every day, I’ve been on the local sites, trying to catch up with the rhythm of the city. But it’s not there. Nothing was. Slow news days? A lot of slow news days, I supposed.
Then it hit me. Not less news, fewer news stories. Though for the past ten years I’ve watched the decline of local news everywhere, but it never hit me so hard, because I never cared so much. I know and love New Britain for the complicated, interesting, political city that it is.
But because of changes in the speed of news delivery, the decline of the advertising dollar, and newspaper-chain ownership, newspapers and reporters of today are different. They don’t have the luxuries the single-news-source newspapers used to provide: reporters’ time. A week, sometimes, on a big story. Three or four reporters and a handful of photographers to cover something, hitting every angle or person possible. Even then, we felt like we had limited resources. How must reporters feel now? Yes, the wonders of modern technologies never cease, and we are all immeasurably better for it. But it comes at a cost. And that cost is glaring in New Britain news coverage.
Gone are reporters’ days of walking through city hall, plopping down in the chair across from a city official, from the mayor down, chatting, sometimes realizing a story is there, sometimes just shooting the breeze. Gone is the awareness that things were often a lot more public than a lot of city officials always wanted.
What is the solution? Time will tell. Where there is need, there’s opportunity. For now, maybe this website will provide a voice for those without a forum.
Every day, I’ve been on the local sites, trying to catch up with the rhythm of the city. But it’s not there. Nothing was. Slow news days? A lot of slow news days, I supposed.
Then it hit me. Not less news, fewer news stories. Though for the past ten years I’ve watched the decline of local news everywhere, but it never hit me so hard, because I never cared so much. I know and love New Britain for the complicated, interesting, political city that it is.
But because of changes in the speed of news delivery, the decline of the advertising dollar, and newspaper-chain ownership, newspapers and reporters of today are different. They don’t have the luxuries the single-news-source newspapers used to provide: reporters’ time. A week, sometimes, on a big story. Three or four reporters and a handful of photographers to cover something, hitting every angle or person possible. Even then, we felt like we had limited resources. How must reporters feel now? Yes, the wonders of modern technologies never cease, and we are all immeasurably better for it. But it comes at a cost. And that cost is glaring in New Britain news coverage.
Gone are reporters’ days of walking through city hall, plopping down in the chair across from a city official, from the mayor down, chatting, sometimes realizing a story is there, sometimes just shooting the breeze. Gone is the awareness that things were often a lot more public than a lot of city officials always wanted.
What is the solution? Time will tell. Where there is need, there’s opportunity. For now, maybe this website will provide a voice for those without a forum.
posted by Elisa Hutcoe Krochmalnyckyj at
6:34 AM
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