I was at a party last Saturday
night.
Parties make me
uncomfortable these days. I don’t follow or care about sports, so that’s an
automatic conversation killer. I only knew about three people at the party, so
I took my drink and retreated to the dining room, as most of the action was in
the kitchen.
Another fellow was
already at the table. He introduced himself as an engineer who worked for one
of the auto companies. He looked to be about 15 years younger than me, so I
wasn’t expecting much in the way of conversation.
Was I wrong.
He’d listened as I was
introduced around and wanted to know what life was like as a journalist. I told
him a couple stories, but he wasn't satisfied. His real question was bigger
than my answers.
He said he was outright
upset about the declining state of newspapers here and across America. “Who’s
watching the politicians these days? The police? The school boards? They’re all
getting away with murder!”
He continued and I lit
right up. I told him he was not only correct, but the situation was likely to
worsen as newspapers are forced out of business. I hadn't heard such rhetoric
coming from a non-journalist in years.
We entered into a
discussion that lasted about an hour. Turns out he’s very well-read—something I
don’t expect of most people anymore. He uses his local library frequently. He
listens to National Public Radio and watches a couple of current event programs
on public television.
I was happily stunned.
I agreed with what he
was saying. We agreed things aren’t the way they used to be just a few years
ago, when newspapers still had some money, guts and could get things done.
These days time and budget constraints keep reporters from digging too deep
into corruption. One online news source, Propublica.org, is kicking that trend
because it has private funding and a pretty nice mission statement:
“To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by
government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of
investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of
wrongdoing.”
The private funding I mentioned is important. I was once told by someone
who works at Propublica.org that their staff can dig with impunity because no
one can threaten to apply political pressure to shut them down.
I was thinking of The Detroit News when I wrote that last paragraph.
Owned by a passionless and sterile investment company, I’ve heard from former
News journalists who said they couldn’t expect much in the way of support for their
investigative work.
I had all but given up
hope of finding someone like this engineer, who would have made a good reporter
himself. I can only hope there are more out there like him, who see through the
shame of Fox 2 Entertainment (I can’t call what they do news because it just
isn’t) and demand accountability.
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