This winter, AJR conducted its fifth census of newspaper reporters who cover state government, its first since 2003, and found a staggering loss of reporting firepower at America’s state capitols.
The article is here. More on the results is here. See also this earlier post.
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I can’t tell if the implication here is that this means newspapers are redirecting resources or simply that this reflects a larger trend – the decline of the newspaper. It might be interesting to see this chart up against one showing all employees of newspapers over the same period.
In either case, and perhaps this is part of the authors’ point – although if so it is being made quite subtly – we might look to other news sources to pick up the slack, before we throw in the towel on the 4th estate and its role in a democracy.
Specifically, I am talking about blogs (which obviously didn’t exist at the time the data were assembled for the works discussed in your previous post on the subject, John). For instance, there is a growing little community of capitol-based bloggers here in Austin, and I see no reason to think they can’t serve/aren’t serving the same role as was previously served by the reporter on the capitol beat from the Bryan/College Station Eagle. Or whatever.
What is the optimal number?
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