The decline of local news

[rockfan4]

We have 2 TV stations here in La Crosse, CBS and ABC. We get our NBC and Fox from Eau Claire, which is about an hour north of us.

I usually watch the ABC station a bit in the morning to catch the weather, and then I'll watch their news at 11:00 while I'm eating lunch.

Monday morning they announced they were ending the 11:00am news, and cutting the morning news from 2 1/2 hours to 2 hours. The second part doesn't really bother me. They really only have about 30 minutes of news, and just repeat stories over and over. But I do miss watching local news at lunch time. The CBS station has a program at noon, but I've been eating lunch at 11:00 for forever and I'm not going to change now. There also seems to be a noticeable decline in the quality of anchors from both stations. Maybe we're not a big enough market, but if you're good, you only stay about a year and then move to a bigger station in a bigger market. We now get "forecasters" rather than meteorologists. The evening CBS guy does the weather from his house in Colorado.

The local newspaper is still a daily, but it is printed in Madison and brought in overnight. The building is vacant and for sale. The only thing I read is one guy who does a story every Saturday about businesses opening, closing and moving. Their site is locked down to the point you can only read one story before a popup blocks your access asking you to subscribe. Sometimes you can't even read that one article without disabling javascript.

Now I've got to adjust the onion on my belt and go outside and yell at some clouds.

[Seahawk]

The DC stations are for weather only: They all have some excellent Meteorologists, I record the early folks and FF to the weather.

That is about it.

[GH85Carrera]

We are fortunate to have an Oklahoma owned and managed TV station that is a CBS affiliate. They do have local coverage, and likely the best weather reporting in the country. They also own a TV station in Tulsa, and when the weather gets exciting they will send two helicopters, and over a dozen storm trackers.

The other two stations are good, but owned by the big chains, and don't have the freedom of a local owned company.

[pwd72s]

Once I discovered that I could get a decent weather report on my 'puter, I quit watching the PDX nightly liberal views...didn't care about the sports scores. Weather & sports were the only 2 parts that were accurate. The rest was just propaganda...

[KFC911]

The 5 am traffic report showing an empty stretch of I-40 is always a hoot ... along with the BREAKING NEWS of sunrise at 7:10 .

And non-locals mispronouncing road names, etc. .....

Three Are Dee Street

[Norm K]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Once I discovered that I could get a decent weather report on my 'puter, I quit watching the PDX nightly liberal views...didn't care about the sports scores. Weather & sports were the only 2 parts that were accurate. The rest was just propaganda...

What, no more Richard Ross or Doug LaMear, or even Pete and Tracy on the Portland airwaves?

_

[astrochex]

Florida local news is mostly the same weather report. Some stations boast about “updates” every 10 minutes. Combine that with ubiquitous ambulance chaser commercials and there isn’t much time for actual news.

[p911dad]

Charlotte, NC has a bunch of TV stations. There is one that is almost totally local news, WJZY Queen City News, and they really get into it The main local newspaper is mostly a one-party rag like most towns, the print news has mostly been snuffed by modern times, but they still have game with lots of local special articles.
The WCCB channel has mostly local morning news with good looking gals reporting, so I guess this town is lucky in the local news regard.

[JackDidley]

We have a couple news anchors that are not very good. They cant pronounce simple names of people or locations. Small town so they do not have a lot to talk about.

[A930Rocket]

I stopped watching the news years ago.

I picked up a newspaper recently for ****s and grins and I couldn’t believe how small it had become. Not just width and height, but number of pages.

[Arizona_928]

La crosse is pretty big and has an influx of a migrants and other Americans. Especially in the plants in and surrounding the area. I was at mccoy the other day and i cold hear the polka from the local park across town. It’s not even that bad in central Phoenix…

I can see the local stations being replaced with telemundo…

[Heel n Toe]

We have local news 3 to 4 times every 24 hrs. on the four major affiliates here in central SC and they all do a really good job. They add in a bit of national news as filler when they need to, but most are real news hounds for local happenings... from community "positive news" to sports to law enforcement stuff and of course weather. Couldn't be better.

[jim72911t]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Once I discovered that I could get a decent weather report on my 'puter, I quit watching the PDX nightly liberal views...didn't care about the sports scores. Weather & sports were the only 2 parts that were accurate. The rest was just propaganda...

Wrong forum.

[flatbutt]

CBS news streaming out of NYC advertises Rx drugs every ad break so I wonder what their stake in Pharma is. In an hour of "news" I get maybe 30 minutes of reporting. It's on in the background as I do my morning routine so no big deal but my local NJ news is even more useless.

[red-beard]

Interesting. One of our local TV stations is going to an all-news format except during primetime. I'm guessing that local news type programming is cheaper than the syndication fees for Dr. Phil, etc.

[rockfan4]

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

La crosse is pretty big and has an influx of a migrants and other Americans. Especially in the plants in and surrounding the area. I was at mccoy the other day and i cold hear the polka from the local park across town. It’s not even that bad in central Phoenix…

I can see the local stations being replaced with telemundo…

True. It's really helped the Mexican aisle at the local grocery. Now there's more to choose from than just Ortega or Old El Paso. There's some items in the produce section that you don't normally see in a store in Wisconsin either.

From the weather this morning - we have a marginal severe weather warning. Which I guess means it's going to rain, and maybe be a little windy.

[jyl]

No comment on local TV news, as I do not watch television. The local TV stations have active online news sites, which are okay for "breaking" local news but don't cover anything in depth.

For print news, Portland has three local daily papers (Oregonian, Tribune, and Portland Business Journal) and a few weeklies (Willamette Week, Mercury, etc) and a few neighborhood weeklies (Hollywood Star, SE Examiner, NW Examiner). Oregonian is owned and produced out-of-town, runs mostly AP-wire stories with a bit of local content, and is generally considered fishwrap. Tribune is focused on local content and decent for that, PBJ is focused on local business content and quite decent. The weeklies have traditionally been focused on lifestype and entertainment, but in recent years Willamette Week has added some good investigative reporters and more real news content, while Mercury has become even more fluffy. The neighborhood weeklies do unsung work on goings-on in their neighborhoods people and places.

The biggest failing in the local news scene is, in my view, the lack of deep-digging investigative reporting and the apparent allergy of the reporters to crunching numbers and any sort of quantitative analysis. This allows all kinds of propaganda and bull-crap to get spouted by interest groups and politicians without pushback. Since readers generally are not numerate, they don't realize how they are being misled.

If I had a column in one of the local papers, I'd devote it to a daily "infographic". Give people data in a form they can understand.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by jim72911t

Wrong forum.

Not really. This is about rags, not political statements per se. If the rags are political, that's not discussing the politics in particular, just recognizing many rag's obvious slant.

The L.A.Times is blatant. It doesn't get any more left. Preaching to the choir. I can say that w/o going PARF.

[matthewb0051]

This is the only reason to watch local news:

[matthewb0051]

Not withstanding my last post; I do watch the beginning segment of local news occasionally just to keep up with all the crime and murders.