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Here in Austin, Texas, a TV station fired its news
director and didn’t replace him. Instead, the conglomerate owner
decided to put the news director of its Tampa, Fla., station in charge of
our “local” news coverage. Rumor has it that the Tampa guy had
once visited our fair city, so apparently that qualified him to be the
long-distance arbiter of Austin news. Can journalism sink any lower? Of course it can! Blazing a new path to the journalistic bottom, a Web
journal that covers city politics and government in Pasadena, Calif., has
gone much further than Tampa to get local coverage. James MacPherson,
editor and publisher of pasadenanow.com, flung his job net all the way to
India to find low-cost journalists to report on the happenings in Pasadena.
MacPherson says that because city council meetings
can be watched on the Internet, a reporter from anywhere can cover
what’s happening. Excuse me, but even if you were sitting right in
front of most city council meetings, you still wouldn’t know what the
heck was happening, because the real deals are cut in the back rooms. Well, says MacPherson, “Whether you’re at
a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you’re still just a phone
call or e-mail away from the interview.” Yes, but — hello!
— it helps if the interviewer has some clue about the cultural
nuances and community dynamics at work . . . something a bit more solid
than having seen the Rose Bowl Parade on TV. They say that a big part of life consists of simply
being there — and in real journalism, it seems to me, “being
there” requires more than virtual reality.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in May 24-30, 2007.
