The missed opportunity

Bud Kennedy, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, sent a request to publishers of small Texas newspapers for their thoughts on front page coverage of the national elections. If the responses were typical (and I suspect they were), I'm disappointed in my Texas newspaper brethren.

The request was prompted by picketing at the office of the Terrell Tribune, a paper that allegedly led with national stories from the wire in advance then downplayed the national election results on Election Day. I wasn't there. I don't know what pressures Bill and his staff faced that day so I won't comment on that situation.

Besides, that's not what disappoints. What disappoints is that it appears Texas publishers missed a huge opportunity in this election.

This was an historic event, one of the biggest, easiest-to-cover stories of the decade. Everyone in our communities talked about it and everyone had an opinion, regardless of who they voted for or why. To dismiss an event of this significance simply because we had to use a little imagination to tie it to our own back yards or because Tuesdays are a little tough is selling our readers — and ourselves — short.

As many of you know, I edited and published weekly and small daily newspapers in Texas for the better part of two decades. I found that my readers really appreciated local coverage of large state and national issues like pubic school finance, immigration reform and congressional redistricting. The argument of "it didn't happen here" doesn't hold because these issues have an impact on everyone in our communities and, in some cases, a profound impact.

Agreed, had I been publishing a newspaper this cycle, my advance coverage would have been focused on the local elections because our readers could get that news nowhere else. But, by the same token, neither could our readers get news of the local reaction to the results of the national election anywhere else.

To not mention this election and the local reaction to it in a prominent fashion is, in my opinion, the same as if we had completely ignored the events of 9/11. How many of us tore up our front page that Tuesday morning and devoted the rest of that day to covering the local reaction to jets crashing into the World Trade Center? We did in Cameron and, from the standpoint of local color, it was probably one of the best front pages that year. Plus, it sold out on the racks.

Instead of taking the easy way out (“It ain’t local so we don’t pay attention”), why not have prepared some sort of local reaction piece to this historic event?

One of our most under-served market segments, the “minority” community, probably voted in record numbers so they could vote for the first black man to be nominated for president atop a national party, even though they knew their vote wouldn't really make a difference to the Texas electoral vote. Isn’t that a story? Isn’t that a local hook?

And, frankly, that’s part of where this controversy — and opportunity —comes from. Our newspapers, especially those papers serving our more rural areas, serve a dwindling elite. That elite is largely white. Despite years of effort at racial diversification (often halfhearted effort), the people running and working in those newspapers are also largely white. The advertisers who support those newspapers — also likely white — probably don't care that much about our minority communities, though they should because we've all seen the demographic projections.

In Texas (and in this country) our white population is shrinking while our minority populations are growing. At the same time, we're all terrified at how long it might take for the rot of declining circulation and declining ad revenues afflicting the metro papers to trickle down to our Texas towns. To survive, we'll have to reach out to everyone in our communities, not just the elite.

If no one else, minorities in our communities watched this election closely ... and too many of our community newspapers discounted them and this elections' importance by giving it little or no coverage. Really, that’s a shame.

Texas publishers missed a huge opportunity.