Changes at the Union Tribune, and Channel 6 News

The Union Tribune will change. We are told the changes will be positive, but judging from how the paper has shrunk, the opposite may be true. YES absolutly, TV news follows the paper. Each day TV reporters follow a lead from an article rather than do original reporting. Time is one big factor. We know that senario very well My question is what can we create to replace a system that is broken. How can we do a better job of informing our viewers or readers. How can we make it user-friendly, and still make a profit? This is the very heart of our research at newmediarights.org. Lets start with a newscast for both the web/TV/newspapers at the same time. I will post that comment tomorrow.

Damn right we need the Union Tribune. It may be one of the worst newspapers in the USA (especially since it has lost most of its best reporters, but local newspapers like the Union Tribune and the North County TImesa re vital and essential to the public welfare of San Diego County.

The problem with TV and print journalism in San Diego isn't the quantity of reportage, it is the quality.

You can tell which stories TV news producers value if it comes before or after the "animal story" about halfway through the show. You know what I'm talking about - a new baby Koala at the zoo, or a lost dolphin in the Sacramento River. If a story is AFTER the animal story, such as the facxt that your local school is closing due to budget cuts, it is of low value to the news department.

One of the most important things a *real* journalist does is check facts and verify the credibility of sources. This ideal of attempting to shed light and nuance on the truth with original research is missing in San Diego. When its not covering the latest gore-splattered freeway crash, or what's happening with Britney Spear's vagina today, the TV news simply follows what the Union Tribune publishes. Monkey See, Monkey Do ... and in the last few years the Union has become even more simian thanks to talent flight.

While there are still a few "real" TV reporters out there (.i.e. investigative reporter John Mattis at Channel 6), most of them are failed actors and graduates of modeling schools who couldn't get real work elsewhere. They are not trained.

The erosion of newspapers has left journalists in a position where they don't have time to check facts or conduct original research and investigations. TV reporters routinely read newspaper stories without analyzing them or checking facts. Publishers, worried about losing ad revenue, pressure reporters NOT to cover issues that near and dear to advertisers' hearts, such as the rising cost of phone services and the completely illegitimate use of public money to build SDG&E's massive and unnecessary Sunrise PowerLink.

These stories are under-covered, partly out of fear of losing some of the $125 million in advertising spent by SDG&E to promote the PowerLink, or the billions in advertising spent by the telecom industry.

For years television news has simply reported freeway crashes, celebrity news, spectacular crimes and political scandals involving sex or greed. What doesn't fall into those four categories is usually covered in the Union Tribune. In fact, the majority of TV news directors in this town read the Union before deciding what they should cover in their daily broadcasts ... unless of course, it isn't trumped by live footage of an adorable kitten being saved by fireman from a burning tree or an exciting new lip-gloss tip from Madonna.

Newspapers don't cover that stuff. That's why they are necessary.