Bill Engle, reporter for Richmond’s Palladium-Item has a good article reporting on the budgetary impact of the city’s contracts with police and firefighters and the resulting overtime costs. It’s the kind of thing that we’ll really miss if and when the newspapers go under. And it’s the kind of thing that newspapers should have been doing more of in years past to avoid some of their current problems.
Solid reporting on local news is where newspapers, in my mind, really add value and provide an indispensable service to the community. I don’t suppose the profit margin on these kinds of stories is as big as running a national wire story or running an opinion piece. But wire stories and opinion pieces turn a local newspaper into a commodity. You can go somewhere else and get the same thing for less or for free. Actual local reporting is something you can’t get nearly as well from legions of bloggers or from a variety of other newspapers. Hopefully local reporting is a critical element in whatever business model for newspapers emerges from the current wreckage.
Thank you! The majority of newspapers have forgotten this and THAT is why their bottom lines and profit margins are dropping. Advertisers don’t want to spend money where people aren’t reading; people aren’t reading the local papers because they’ve cut staff who covered the local news. Cut the wire service and hire another reporter!
That’s all true, where it happens. Most newspapers have embraced their future demise by running AP, NYT, WaPo, etc stories one can get anywhere. They usually have great sports sections doing what the front section could have done- covered local news.
The type of story Doug cites is a rarity at the Palladium-Item nowdays. They’ve laid off a large number of employess in the last year or so and much of their online presence is wire service stories, local blogs, pictures from local events, etc. While the story Doug linked to may give the impression that the Palladium-Item is different from other papers–it isn’t. Frankly, I’m surprised that veteran reporters such as Bill Engle are still there.