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South of the James

Conaway Haskins


 

 

Who's Watching

the Richmond Media?

 

Community weeklies diverge on news council idea.


 

Part I of a Two-Part Series

 

Greg Pearson does not particularly care for the Richmond Times-Dispatch or NBC-12. Actually, Pearson is not a big fan of Media General or many of the corporate media conglomerates. The publisher and editor of the Chesterfield Observer, one of two community newsweeklies covering Virginia’s fourth-largest locality, Pearson believes that local news issues suffer a lack of coverage by such large media corporations. As a response, Person regularly uses his “Media Watch” column to chastise the larger news outlets for what he considers to be shabby treatment of Chesterfield news.

 

In Pearson’s mind, the situation with Media General is drastic enough to mandate an institutional response. For quite some time, he has been beating the drums for the creation of an outside intermediary organization to serve as a watchdog for fairness and accuracy in coverage, especially of news in his hometown. Called a “news council,” this group would field complaints, conduct investigation and serve as a sounding board for citizen, business, and government criticism of the local press.

 

According to Pearson, “the news council idea is not an original one. I first inquired about it in 1997 when I heard about it and contacted the Minnesota News Council. I spoke with Gary Gilson (the Minnesota group’s executive director) who said it would be announced what markets are given a grant [by the Knight Foundation] to get a news council started.”

 

What Pearson is referring to is the Knight Foundation, a national grant-making institution founded by the men who started what the Knight-Ridder media empire. In June, Knight awarded two $75,000 grants to emerging news councils in Southern California and New England to assist with start-up costs. According to a Knight press release, “News councils are independent, nonprofit organizations that promote trusted journalism by investigating accuracy and fairness complaints against news outlets. They help determine the facts involved in these disputes, and provide open forums where citizens and journalists can discuss media ethics, standards and performance."

 

The Minnesota group that Pearson alludes to is the oldest such organization in the nation. It was started in the 1970s in response to the decline in public trust of media in that state. Financially supported by foundations, media organizations, individual donors, and corporations, the Minnesota News Council conducts public hearings, hosts public forums, and engages in workshops and other activities in order to promote “fair, vigorous and trusted journalism by engaging the news media and the public in examining standards of fairness.” According to its website, “democracy needs trusted news media; media openness earns public trust. A complaint is a gift that helps a news outlet look at its performance and improve it.” Prior to the Knight grant, only one other organization of this sort existed, an eight-year-old council in the state of Washington.

 

Pearson has previously attempted to garner the support of his colleagues in Metro Richmond’s press. He says, “Last year I suggested that [some local media colleagues] take on the project just for Richmond or statewide, but the word came back that a news council would potentially damage local media relationships. I'm not looking to spearhead the idea or necessarily serve but do support the concept. Most of the folks serving on the Minnesota News Council are not in the media but have media backgrounds or work with the media, including judges and attorneys.

 

Despite his calls to action, Pearson is not necessarily up for bearing the brunt of the burden of starting such an organization. In his mind, “This is a much bigger concept than a weekly newspaper can pull off. I'm actively involved in the day-to-day running of our paper. The daily media -- particularly the Richmond Times-Dispatch Dispatch -- is opposed to the idea. They believe it's not needed.

 

Going alone is not an option for him as he feels that the targets of his scorn are the very entities that should support the news council. Pearson asserts, “For a media council to be started it will take the mainstream press to support it. My impression is that the media reluctantly gets behind the idea because of pressure to accept it.

 

For the time being, the likelihood of a news council growing in Metro Richmond seems off in the distance. Any number of pieces would have to fall into place to make such a formalized media monitoring organization a reality. Despite the odds, Greg Pearson remains undeterred. While he recognizes the difficulty of his vision, he is mostly undaunted by the challenges therein. He has concluded that, “Upsetting the status quo is upsetting. I'm a proponent [because] it would be the right and fair thing to do.

 

If he could only get his colleagues in and around the region’s community-based and alternative media to agree, he just might be on to something.

 

*****

 

Mark Fausz, publisher and editor of the Village News, a community newsweekly focusing mostly on eastern Chesterfield County, is by no means a fan of the Richmond Times-Dispatch or similar large media companies. On the contrary, he holds rather strong negative views of the big Richmond paper. He says, “Personally, I find the Times Dispatch lacking and politically biased, not only D[emocrats] and R[epublicans] but county vs. county.”  Fausz’s paper is the chief rival of the Chesterfield Observer in the race to capture the local news market. Despite producing a smaller outlet for news and opinion, Fausz has a different take on the issue of whether Richmond needs a local news council the likes of which Observer chief Greg Pearson ardently advocates for.

 

As for a formal media monitoring group, Fausz is not necessarily a proponent. He is, however, a vigorous promoter of alternative media sources like his paper and even Pearson’s. He also supports the growth and development of blogs as providers of local news and opinion content. To that end, he provides relevant links on the Village News’ website (including South of the James and Bacon’s Rebellion). Despite his distaste for the big media, Fausz prefers a less-institutionalized response to consumer dissatisfaction. As he says, “A news council will not replace market research for a big operation like the Times-Dispatch. Their news forums are for show only or possibly a large focus group. It is done through the business department. The people at media organizations that need convincing are not listening, they’re looking at the bottom line.

 

Although his paper has a relatively small reported circulation of around 11,000, Fausz is more than willing to let market forces dictate the fortunes of media entities, large and small. For him, “the readers are the ‘news council.’ I think that in the media business, a reader or a viewer has options. In the Richmond area, he or she can get regional news from the Times Dispatch or four separate television news channels or even Richmond.com. There are alternatives although one may not realize it at first.

 

Fausz regularly watches developments in the Metro area’s media market, and he draws a more expansive picture of it. From his vantage point, “If one doesn’t care for [the Times-Dispatch], there are alternative such as the community newspapers and the Internet, or if you’re not in a hurry, Style Weekly. They all may have a different approach, but local TV is going to scoop the breaking news anyway - the murder and mayhem stuff. Newspapers, and now the Internet, are charged with the job of in-depth reporting, and one thing the Times-Dispatch or any other large daily cannot do is in-depth stories on every community in its readership area.

 

Fausz’s stance stems from the changing media market dynamics that are present in Richmond and beyond. It is no secret that major daily newspapers are scrambling to stem the loss of readership to a growing cadre of alternatives. By the same token, television news is spread broadly among a number of regional and national network and cable options.

 

As Fausz notes, “The Times Dispatch is losing readership continually, and that’s why you have recently seen the emergence [at Media General] of the Midlothian Exchange, a new Spanish language publication, a Style Weekly type publication, and a move to special subscription rates for their stock [market] reports. It’s not news that the larger dailies are having a hard time. News councils have not or never will have an effect on that. Like any other business, publishing is market driven. People want to read or watch what is most important to them – what touches their own lives.

 

Fausz sees an opportunity for entrepreneurs like himself – and by extension, the Chesterfield Observer – in fulfilling the community’s need for news and opinion. Says Fausz, “I am prejudiced, of course, on the issue of community newspapers, but I have read a lot about the future of the genre, and, at least for the time being, the future of print media is in specialty publications, especially community newspapers."

 

Operating in Virginia’s fourth largest locality, a county with a population of near 300,000 residents, Fausz believes that Chesterfield’s growth is breeding additional segmentation for the local media market. He notes that, “In Chesterfield there is a natural barrier between southeastern and northwestern Chesterfield. It is our [Village News] contention that Chesterfield is getting too large to do local news, features and opinion, in a countywide publication [like the RTD]. People in Chester don’t know where Moseley is and many of those in Midlothian could care less what happens in Enon. [They say].” It is against this backdrop that Fausz finds opportunities for himself and his community media colleagues.

 

One area of agreement between both Greg Pearson and Mark Fausz is over the Times-Dispatch’s coverage of Chesterfield-centric news. According to Fausz, “There have been times when [Chesterfield] county officials have gone to the Times-Dispatch and asked, possibly threatened, the paper to stop printing negative stories about Chesterfield. Once again, it is market driven; they will print what they think people want to know. They are not going to print stories that they think will not be read, at least I don’t think so.

 

Where the Village News owner differs is in his suggested recourse. The way he sees it, “The answer for Chesterfield government is to quit doing stupid things!

 

Having watched overall media trends, Fausz believes that “the future of print media is in specialty publications, especially community newspapers...the only way to convince a business to change its practices is through the market.” In the final analysis, as he sees it, “If someone doesn’t like the Times-Dispatch, Observer, Midlothian Exchange or Village News, they can quit subscribing to or picking it up. Soon the advertising will wane and the end will come quickly.

 

*****

 

The shortcomings of Metro Richmond’s mainstream media also extend to its coverage of the African-American community. Despite the presence of a number of talented black journalists inside the traditional outlets, reporting and editorializing on the contradictory polarization and progress on race-related matters in the region still falls mostly on the smaller shoulders of the area’s two black newsweeklies, the Richmond Free Press (link not available) and the Richmond Voice. The Free Press has long been an antagonist of the RTD, once even taking the daily paper to court over the Free Press’ status as a paper or record for the publication of legal notices. Rarely does a week go by in which the editors of black newsweekly do not gleefully lampoon and lambaste the RTD in ink.

 

The region’s other black-themed newspaper – the Richmond Voice - takes a less strident, but just as critical view of the RTD. It chooses not to print as much on this subject, though. As news editor for the weekly newspaper with a circulation of over 40,000, Marlene Jones focuses on news and opinion for African-American communities in Metro Richmond and Southside Virginia. She is critical of larger media outlets for what she sees as a failure to adequately cover the happenings in communities of color. Jones believes that “just because a young man in Richmond's Gilpin Court community is arrested for carrying an illegal gun does not mean that every young man in that community will behave similarly.”

 

Though she does indicate that she would “have something to say” about any attempts at developing a Richmond-area news council to better monitor coverage and mediate complaints, the Voice’s Marlene Jones reserves her full judgment for Metro Richmond’s overall media scene. She believes that newspapers and large media entities like the RTD thrive off of controversy, with much of that negativity disproportionately attached to black faces. In her mind, “Big media tends to focus on the bad. If I had to guess how much, I'd say [negative stories represent] more than 90 percent of their coverage and [they focus] rarely on the good.  Additionally, inclusion of the whole community in coverage - affluent or not, black or not - demonstrates a dedication to the most important component of the profession - the audience.

 

The Voice is part of the unheralded but vital tradition of the African-American press. In the US, the black media has tended toward advocacy journalism, a tradition that dates back to its crusades against slavery in the antebellum period. From that point onward, in print, radio, and even television, the black media engaged in intrepid efforts to undermine Jim Crow in the early 20th century, and to give voice to little-known facets of African-American life in the years leading up to and following the Civil Rights Movement. To this day, black media outlets continue to showcase both the travails and triumphs of contemporary African-American life.

 

In particular, weekly newspapers like the Voice and Free Press have provided information sustenance for communities oft-ignored by the mainstream press, communities like those where Metro Richmond’s poor, middle and upper classes reside. Out of this tradition of community-oriented news gathering and opinion-making, the Voice and Free Press offer their takes on the region’s African American communities, doing what they can to hold the mainstream media to some measure of accountability to its African-Americans readers and story subjects.

 

Though the Voice and papers like it are small businesses seeking to carry out their social missions while maintaining the profitability needed as a going concern, Jones is actually wary of the growing demands of the business side of the media equation. She asserts that responding to corporate concerns as a guide to news coverage essentially waters down journalistic principles. To her, “The journalism profession has to be more than just making money. Accountability to the communities that support the media should be first and foremost and this means being there equally through the good and the bad.  Ignoring the good for the bad and sensationalizing only serves to minimize public trust in media.

 

*****

 

With alternative and community papers like the Richmond Voice and Village News being either unsupportive or lukewarm to the notion of a news council, bringing a full-fledged organization to fruition would appear to be difficult. As the Observer’s Pearson has acknowledged, the burden of maintaining his own newspaper’s commercial viability already makes his full plate rather crowded. Thus, it would appear that those interesting in media watch-dogging should look to other sources. Some Richmond media observers have one such alternative outlet in mind: Blogs.

 

-- September 12, 2006

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Blogology. Conaway Haskins periodically profiles players in Virginia's vibrant blogosphere.

 

About Conaway Haskins. Conaway Haskins is a nonprofit executive & freelance writer in Chesterfield County. Read his profile here.

 

Contact him at:

conaway[at]gmail.com