So Long, Silver Grove Big Trains and Lady Trains?
For all of the bad stuff that has gone on with journalism and particularly newspaper business in the last 20 years, I believe that civic-meeting coverage has vastly improved over that time--more detailed, more nuanced, more lively, just better-reported and -written than it very recently was, period. And I think it makes sense when you think about how the industry segment has changed. As editorial staffs have contracted to just a half-dozen or three or one body in some towns, those individuals have to be very choosy about where they spend their reporting time. They can't afford to lose a day sniffing around for possible stories; they need to be able to schedule their investment of in-the-moment presence and after-the-fact sense making to a specific amount of time and know they are going to walk away with fodder for
X inches of verifiable body copy. Civic meetings lend themselves quite well to this new spartan world of community journalism, and, so, we readers are getting fantastic stuff like
Melinda J. Overstreet's simply brilliant dispatch in the Glasgow Daily Times from "the Planning and Development Committee of the Glasgow Common Council, also known as the Parks and Recreation Department." The chase of Overstreet's report is that it is thought that it will take about a half-million bucks to move the needle on the local parks sitch. However, if you can spare 10 or 15 minutes, her story is better than any high-school civics class you ever had in terms of seeing how American society actually works together in its little clumps of people here, there and yonder across the country to keep each other safe, honest and happy.
Rely on your assets, Gov. Bevin tells western Kentucky (via Channel 6). Take the Ohio River, for example. "We’re talking to metal producers. We’re talking to manufactures that use these metals. We’re talking to a number of people that need access to that water, so I think it’s just a matter of time."
Louisville's Young People in Recovery, on the Indiana slopes.
