The Reading Eagle,
the best place to get local news in Berks County, is branching out.
Having coverage nailed down tight in Berks, the Eagle is now covering the Pottstown
area. For some reason, people love to call things “tri-county.”
The Eagle also
promises more political coverage, now devoting an ambitious whole page every Monday,
though I doubt it’s in response to my recent observation that Berks needs
better political coverage.
Anyways, I was writing about LOCAL political coverage,
especially local school boards, which are very political, make very important
decisions, and produce news that can be fun and interesting to report and read.
But the Eagle is devoting more space to … WIRE STATE NEWS?!
Monday’s initial “The Briefing” [exactly what Time magazine calls its dumbed-down,
office-cooler-one-line-providing wrap-up] is 95 percent state news, most of
which we heard about days ago. Did you know bottles of Prosecco were exploding
in liquor stores?
The page must be easy to produce – just order some poor copy
editor to mindlessly extract it from the Associated Press wire service.
News editor Ron Southwick gets to write a column about state
news when he should be counseling the very young staff reporters on job basics
such as how to work a beat and how to develop sources so when they piss off the
officials they can still get the story.
Nobody who really follows state politics will follow it in
the Eagle. Who could think Berks
readers need bios on seven old white guys going through the budget motions in
Harrisburg?
The Eagle is
sitting on a gold mine right here in Berks – high demand, very short supply
makes LOCAL news really valuable. Just have to dig it up.
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