{"id":6454,"date":"2016-03-16T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6454"},"modified":"2016-03-15T22:38:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T02:38:26","slug":"politics-after-the-gazette-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6454","title":{"rendered":"Politics After the Gazette, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following post is by Adam Pagnucco:<\/em><\/p>\n

When I used to work for a Montgomery County Council Member, there were three beat reporters on county government \u2013 one each for the Post, the Gazette and the Examiner.\u00a0 They were competitors.\u00a0 Each wanted to scoop the others.\u00a0 One of them would glance at another\u2019s laptop at the press table to see what the competitor was writing \u2013 an act that was decidedly unwelcome!\u00a0 I dealt with them all.\u00a0 And now the Gazette and the Examiner are gone.<\/p>\n

Bill Turque of the Washington Post is the sole survivor.\u00a0 Turque is an experienced pro who is respected and feared by those he covers.\u00a0 Recent articles of his that had significant impact include one exposing an operative connected to the county employees union as the source of a website targeting a Council Member<\/a> and one about campaign finance late in the 2014 election season<\/a>.\u00a0 But as skilled as Turque is, there is only one of him.\u00a0 Fifteen years ago, the Post assigned multiple reporters to cover various aspects of Montgomery County.<\/p>\n

Bethesda Magazine is the other outlet that regularly covers the county.\u00a0 Lou Peck is a veteran political reporter who writes highly detailed articles about local elections.\u00a0 Andrew Metcalf and Aaron Kraut are prolific local reporters.\u00a0 Despite its name, Bethesda Magazine covers subjects in many parts of the county.\u00a0 Its close attention to the county\u2019s Department of Liquor Control has been outstanding.\u00a0 But let\u2019s remember that the Gazette used to have dozens of reporters in and around the County and Bethesda Magazine does not have that kind of scale.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about it.\u00a0 WTOP has occasional local coverage, though they are a regional outlet.\u00a0 Local papers like the Sentinel and Takoma Voice have small audiences.\u00a0 Patch came and went quickly.\u00a0 MarylandReporter offers statehouse reporting but not much in-county coverage.\u00a0 Center Maryland has the great columnist Josh Kurtz but no staff reporters.\u00a0 The Sun does not pay much attention to Montgomery or Prince George\u2019s Counties.\u00a0 The local TV stations focus more on crime and weather than on detailed reporting of state and local governments.<\/p>\n

Then there are the blogs.\u00a0 Whatever you think of them, there are several features that distinguish them from mainstream news outlets.\u00a0 1.\u00a0 They tend not to have clear and consistent standards for publishing.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 Most are driven by opinions, sometimes with facts to back them up and sometimes not.\u00a0 3.\u00a0 Many posts are derived from mainstream news articles, which act as original sources of content.\u00a0 4.\u00a0 None of them have the reach of news sources like the Gazette, which once dropped hundreds of thousands of papers in front of doors around the region.<\/p>\n

The hierarchy of the past is gone.\u00a0 Yes, Bill Turque and Bethesda Magazine are probably at the top of the heap \u2013 but there is no heap.\u00a0 There are no longer dozens of reporters patrolling the county for stories on civic events, restaurant openings and closings, local sports, transportation projects, school programs, politics or anything else.<\/p>\n

We will examine what that means for state and local politics in Part Three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following post is by Adam Pagnucco: When I used to work for a Montgomery County Council Member, there were three beat reporters on county government \u2013 one each for the Post, the Gazette and the Examiner.\u00a0 They were competitors.\u00a0 Each wanted to scoop the others.\u00a0 One of them would glance at another\u2019s laptop at … Continue reading Politics After the Gazette, Part II<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[186],"tags":[1545],"class_list":["post-6454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-adam-pagnucco"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1G6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6455,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions\/6455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}