John Temple, publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, writes today about his paper’s coverage of the Iowa Caucus and his plans for covering the Colorado legislature.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/05/temple-a-new-era-in-reporting-at-rocky/
I responded with this:
Why is the Iowa Caucus worth a full time reporter, yet you give no coverage of what's being done here for our Colorado Caucus? Just doesn't make sense to me.
I went to a packed meeting room this morning at Sante Fe & 8th, filled with enthusiastic volunteers every bit as interesting as the folks in Iowa. Meetings like this will be held over and over again from now until February 5. Why aren't they worth covering?
Does it have to be on the nightly TV news for you to consider it worth a reporters time? Maybe it would be a national TV news story if our local papers were covering it like the Iowa papers cover the Iowa Caucus.
Why aren't you assigning a reporter to tell the story of how our Colorado delegates get selected to the national convention this year? Because of TV, do you think your readers are more interested in Iowa than what is going on right here in Colorado? If so, you have an insultingly low opinion of your readers.
No kidding! We are just going to have to get noisy. I think some folks find the caucus system, and the whole electoral process tedious, but the easiest way isn't necessarily the best way. In the end, if we use it, this locally focused system ends up being easy too. And it totally stinks to get ignored by our own, LOCAL media. I simply don't care what's happening in IA while we are caucusing here.
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