Which should local journalism be? Especially in relatively small communities.
Is it more valuable to focus on accentuating the positives and reinforcing community spirit? Or to serve as the only vehicle for holding tight-knit elected officials and other ‘insiders’ to account?
Here’s an interesting story as to how that conflict played out in a small US community.
How would you like to see it play out in Hawke’s Bay? BayBuzz is now conducting its latest reader survey. We’d welcome your views on this and other aspects of our future direction. If you haven’t taken our survey yet, please take 5-8 minutes to help chart our direction. Here’s the survey.
I read our local CHB mail, well aware that the major advertisers are our councils. How to you get unbiased news with that situation? Councils are very unpopular in the area but nothing critical in CHB mail.
Done the survey – but about local papers – if they aren’t prepared to hit out at local issues on a purely investigative way, then they should just hire themselves out as a PR paper and state that’s what they are. If they’re not going to ask the tricky questions they aren’t worth the print and they’re not worth a read by the public – possibly why so many people now prefer to get their information via technology (even though that’s been captured to some extent by the ignorant and idiotic anti everything people). At least Bay Buzz asks and comments on matters with a great deal of honesty.
Local papers should be prepared to hit out at the pompous, the cruel, the entitled, the criminal, and the mistakes (accidental or otherwise) of those in positions of power. If they aren’t prepared to do that, they should admit they are just fluffy apologists and pretenders posing as journalists