Memo to Blodget: Most Journalism is Local

Henry Blodget has written another one of those "journalism isn't really dying" things. People need, he says, to stop "whining" about it. Newspapers might be dying, he says, but that doesn't mean journalism is.

Blodget makes the utterly clueless, but very common mistake of equating "journalism" with national and global coverage. He doesn't even mention local or state coverage, which, since it has always made up the vast bulk of what constitutes newspaper journalism, is also suffering the greatest losses as newspaper staffs are decimated.

Bloomberg and Reuters are doing well, he says, so that means journalism is doing well, even if newspapers aren't. Every example Blodget gives of a story broken by a Web operation or a wire service has to do with a national or international event or issue. (It's telling that he doesn't mention the AP, and that the wire services he names cover business news.)

Most of the 13,000 journalists who have lost their jobs this year covered states and localities. Blodget should take a field trip to a three-quarters-empty statehouse bureau sometime and ask the people there what is being missed.

Lots, they'll tell him. I'll guarantee you that right now, there is rampant corruption going on across America that would either never have happened or would have been uncovered if newspapers were at their staffing levels of just a decade ago.

And not only corruption, but incompetence, waste, and other problems of local and state governments, school boards, cops and courts, police, park districts, local business. And not only problems—even the good stuff that government does is going unnoticed or undercovered. Even just everyday stories of budgets being passed or cops being hired helps people understand the workings of their government. But even those stories are going un- or undercovered.