Without Newspapers … You Get Bell
Without newspapers, we get Bell
8/4/2010 5:49:00 PM
By Silas Lyons
Redding Record Searchlight (CA)
For some time now, people have been asking with increasing urgency what would happen to communities if they didn’t have newspapers.
Thanks to the leaders of Bell, which didn’t have one, we no longer have to wonder.
Three top officials of the small and depressed city in the midst of greater Los Angeles were paid enormous salaries by their wildly overcompensated City Council — all while residents endured nearly the highest rate of property taxes in Southern California.
Whatever you think of Kurt Starman’s salary for managing a city government that serves almost 100,000 people, Redding could buy four of him for the $800,000 that Robert Rizzo was earning to run the 40,000-population city of Bell. And have money left over.
To be clear, we know all of this now because of a newspaper — the Los Angeles Times.
But the Times fields a large metropolitan news force that serves a big regional audience. It isn’t going to put a reporter in every small-town city council chamber, and most of its readers probably wouldn’t be interested if it did. The Times got involved, and did a laudable job with the story — once something had already gone terribly wrong.
But Bell should never have reached that point. And a great deal of taxpayer money was consumed by its vulturous leaders before anyone noticed.
Bell is an industrial town that industry has long-since abandoned. Its population now is dominated by recent immigrants, many of them illegal. It’s no longer the kind of place where a local newspaper can survive, especially with all the other challenges the industry has faced.
In fact, the family that owned the Bell, Maywood, Cudahy Community News sold it in 1998 — “right around the time Bell hired its highly overpaid city administrator,” family member Brian Hews wrote in a column. Today, Hews is publisher of the Los Cerritos Community Newspaper Group.
“Art Aguilar was the editor at the time and, suffice to say, you did not mess with Art,” he wrote.
With the pesky local journalists out of the picture, Bell became a juicy morsel for the opportunistic and ethically challenged.
Of course, it didn’t help that the residents seem to have been uninterested for a long time.
But the fact is that the local exercise of democracy depends on the Fourth Estate. And watch-dogging local government is a job for which television, radio and even most bloggers have proven ill-equipped. Newspapers do it best — usually just by showing up, or by reviewing agendas.
“In short, the Bell spectacle is what happens to communities without their own old-fashioned diligent news coverage by veteran newspaper reporters, or at least smart reporters led by veteran newspaper editors,” wrote Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, in a column last week. “The result need not be on paper, but it must be done with the community memory and professional savvy almost unique to newspaper-trained journalists with experience watching small-town politics.”
It’s not just cities, either. We and other daily and weekly newspapers throughout the north state keep a watchful eye on school districts, community service districts and counties. The fact that journalists are watching tends to have a purifying effect.
I vividly remember showing up as a cub reporter at a school board meeting and having one of the board members publicly chastise me in the midst of the proceedings. “This is a family affair,” she said, “and the newspaper has no business here. We shouldn’t have to discuss this in front of you.”
The Mountain Gate Community Services District has given off the same vibe over the past year.
The reason I believe so passionately in the work we’re doing now to transform our newspaper and our industry is that we must thrive so that the discomfort of such public officials will never diminish.
If it does, bad things happen. Just ask Bell.
Thank you for joining our conversation on OKC Central. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.
Comments
This is an interesting perspective and prompts interesting queries, Steve.
One of the queries is this: (1) Since the Oklahoman is the only real daily general newspaper in OKC today, what would life be like here without the Oklahoman?
A second query is this: (2) What would life be like WITH the Oklahoman AND a real-life competitor, such as the Oklahoma Journal was at one time. But, the 2nd query begs the question.
Given (in my estimation) that the Oklahoman’s ownership/management, which could easily and reasonably present its viewpoints in the paper’s “editorial side,” has demonstrated that it is more than willing to reach over to the “news gathering and presentment side” and influence the “who, what, where, how, and why” side of the newspaper, which of course is what a newspaper is really all fundamentally about, for that kind of a newspaper, I would say good riddance.
Some other media would quickly surface to take its place and the Oklahoman’s good reporters would find a place even though the transition would be difficult and tumultuous.
Oklahoma City existed before the Oklahoman’s ascendancy in influence and power and it will exist at least as well if not better after its decline. A better day may be ahead, though it will probably come after my lifetime. But I do hope that it will come. Heck, maybe even a new newspaper, what a deal.
Doug, you and I are friends, but there are times we disagree and this is one of those instances. Either you value my reporting or not. Either you value having Oklahoman reporters at the Capitol or not. I understand you disagree with some of the paper’s editorial operations. That’s fine. I can bet you there are decisions being made at papers across the country you wouldn’t agree with.
And if The Oklahoman went away, don’t be so sure something better would rise in its place. I’d argue otherwise.
Now, would I like to have more competition covering what’s going on out there? Heck yeah.
Steve, yes, we are friends, but you over simply by focusing on the trees and not the forest. For you, you would say, “Hey, take a look at the good stuff that we do,” along the lines that you just said, and you would say, “What a loss were that good stuff not to occur.”
I would say that if the forest is infested with blight that the trees are not soon to follow, as some already have.
You are absolutely correct, I have no way of knowing what might follow the Oklahoman would be any better a citizen (as a newspaper in the historical sense, which is to say, a true and independent member of the 4th estate), but if it did not fit that mold it would certainly not have the power and the ability to abuse that power that exists today.
I think we all sometimes wish the Oklahoman would more often live up to some sort of journalistic repute, but it does at least meet the minimum requirements of a newspaper and the minimum quota of good reporters I guess. So it is better than nothing.
It would be even better if they’d get rid of Jenni Carlson..
Thanks for the article. I work at a newspaper in Atlanta and obviously agree on its importance. There is, however, a huge logical fallacy in this argument. If the contention is that public corruption and scandal simply wither away under the righteous glare of newspapers, then I have 5 syllables for you: Washington, D.C. One of the best papers in the world hasn’t stopped that city from producing bad behavior way in excess of the national norm.
Kudos to the LA Times for breaking the story, but you and I both know there are hundreds, thousands of cruddy things going on right there in LA that will never see the light of day. No news organization has ever been total and complete. Like any organization they have finite resources and have to make choices. There’s just no telling if this Bell situation would or would not have gotten as far as it did with a newspaper in place. Maybe not. But maybe so. We just don’t know.
I think traditional news organizations have a huge part to play in the maintenance of our civil society. But even in cities with active newspapers, lots of bad things still happen. The press is a tool for an active citizenry, not a replacement for it.
Having sampled lots of other papers large and small in the last decade or so, I believe that there are basically two types: those that have a point of view and push it, and not just on the editorial page either – and those that have no point of view whatever and serve mostly as dumping grounds for wire-service copy.
“Bias!” they cry. Well, yeah. Duh. If you’re paying the slightest bit of attention, you adjust your filter and you continue to read, or you take your business elsewhere. This, however, assumes there’s an elsewhere to take it.
I really don’t agree with the article but that’s beside the point.
I’m really confused as to want the author/Steve expects a reader to do? I don’t take a newspaper and I don’t plan to. I read the blog and if there are some ads on there to support the author then that’s great. Just because the bemoan the demise of these large institutions doesn’t mean there’s anything that they or anyone else can do to change what’s going on. Should the newspapers be government sponsored so that they survive? Raise your hand if you think that’s a great idea.
So what’s the actionable item here besides to wish things could just go back to the way they were?
That’s not for me to figure out, that’s for the newspapers. But let me suggest it starts by getting rid/scaling back most of the overhead of producing a physical product and all the associated people/buildings/equipment and do more with just the writers.
@Phil Jackson: Burn the boats. http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/
There’s no going back. The genni is out of the bottle.
Good writing on this story. I would suggest that one study the demographics of Bell…I know the area well…it is quite out of the ordinary and a galaxy of factors colluded to make this incident happen. Historically–it is nothing new, but, there was a time when the townsfolk would have gotten stubby branches, wrapped the ends in rags soaked in kerosene and gone down to City Hall and corrected the problem….
Great perspective. By the way, my days in OKC are numbered short..we should catch up over coffee one more time before I ship out again.