Back in the 1980s, three different daily newspapers regularly had reporters covering City Hall - The Bristol Press, The Hartford Courant and the Waterbury Republican-American.
First to drop was Waterbury, about 20 years ago. By the mid-1990s its last newsboxes vanished in Bristol.
Then the Courant began trailing off its coverage over the last five or six years, though it didn't truly cease until a few months ago, when big cuts there left it too stretched to do much in Bristol.
Now the Press itself is facing closure on or soon after January 12, leaving not a single daily standing with any interest in Bristol.
As a watched nobody at all get up to speak during Monday's public hearing on two proposed new school sites, at least one of which remains controversial, I couldn't help thinking that I was seeing the city's future. Public hearings with no public. Decisions made by officials with no input. Actions taken with nobody even having the slightest idea they'd occurred.
Forget the watchdog nature of journalism for a minute. I was seeing what happens when there is no Press at all. Nobody will have a clue. The glue that's needed for the community to come to a compromise decision, the essence of our republic, is what newspapers provide. Take them out of the picture and everybody is operating in the dark. Forever.
PS: To those who think the Courant will fill the gap, you're simply wrong. Its corporate owners are in wretched shape and it's had to cut back sharply. It's only going to get worse there, too. I imagine if the Press closes, the Courant will make a stab at upping its Bristol coverage for a litle while, but it won't be sustained. Ask anybody who works there. It doesn't have the resources any longer to cover Bristol except incidentally (like a major crime).
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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
5 comments:
I'm tired of hearing you whine about the Bristol Press closing. Stop fussing and go and get a job less than what you really want like the rest of us with Bachelor Degrees have done.
Expand your horizons.
I am sympathetic to the closing of the Press, and to individuals loosing their jobs, however, it will not be the end of the world in terms of news. Bristol does have a weekly paper that I am sure can't wait until the Press closes to expand. Steve, contrary to what you might think, the Press never really gave us much local news either. There were many days when I asked myself why I was buying it, especially on Sundays. Sometimes when we stand in the middle of the forest we canot see the trees in front of us. The Press has been on a steady decline since the late 1970's. A defining moment in my life was when they stopped excepting local political cartoons from local artists who used to do a wonderful job lampooning people like Mayor Longo, etc on the editirial page. Do you realize how many people back then would buy the Press just to see who was being lampooned? Ninety five percent of the Press includes AP news and advertisements that you can get in any other newspaper. The closing of the Press will be sad in many ways, but I would not dwell on the local news coverage issue too long, because it really vanished years ago.
I find it very entertaining that all the community leaders and politicians who have made a career, or at least a hobby, out of bashing the Bristol Press for their mostly inaccurate, or non-existent, local coverage , now want to rally to it's rescue. If the Bristol Press somehow survives all of this, close down the complaint department and complain no more!
Oh, Bristol has a weekly paper, does it? I guess you like looking at a lot of pictures of scantily clad high school girls -- swimmers, cheerleaders, beauty queens, "models."
Honesly, are the police so busy quaffing donuts that they aren't checking into this?
Go to the meetings! You'll get the real story, and you might even have something to say yourself...
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