Tuesday night, in the teaser segment before her report on the opening of the Bridgegate trial, Rachel Maddow reminded the audience just how we got to know about this story.
It started with reporting on a weird commuter traffic snafu reported by local paper which, when the problem continued, started digging and eventually found a now-famous email by Christie Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly pronouncing “time for some traffic problems.”
Maddow went on about how the paper’s reporters took the lead in untangling the ugly tale and ended the teaser with the news that the paper had been bought by a national media conglomerate, which announced plans to cut the newsroom staff in half.
Before cutting to commercial, she faced the camera and said, “During the break, go online and subscribe to your local paper. Doesn’t matter whether you like them or not. You need them. Just do it.”
I’d been putting off subscribing to the Advocate, despite the fact that I do like them. When the Times-Picayune discontinued daily service, shifting their resources to their (really, really bad) online presence, GF and I canceled our T-P subscription and swore we’d subscribe to the Advocate, if only to reward John Georges for stepping up and expanding the Baton Rouge daily to New Orleans.
But somehow we never got around to it. By that time, we were getting almost all our news online anyway.
But Rachel is right, and I’m glad she sternly reminded me Tuesday. No one can get to the bottom of a story quite like a local rag, whose reporters know the terrain and the players. And sometimes what looks like a local story turns out to be something with national, or global, implications. (The stunning story of states illegally buying execution drugs from compounding pharmacies was broken right here by local reporter Della Hasselle, who writes for, among others, the Advocate.)
I’ll still be getting most of my news online. I’m guessing a lot of days that chunk of pulp on the porch might journey unimpeded to the recycling bin.
But I’m happy to be supporting a paper that believes in local reporting and supports journalists right here.
Rachel was right. We need these papers.