At first, there was no news coverage for the 15,000 residents of a central coastal New Hampshire area including the little villages of Deerfield, Candia, Northwoods and Nottingham. Manchester’s Union Leader, a family-owned paper that is fairly notorious for its politically-charged, NH primary coverage every four years, basically ignored the area.
But then three years ago, the residents started their own news site and called it The Forum. Today, the site, a recipient of the 2007 Knight Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism has 240 contributors, sells ads to local businesses, and even publishes an occasional print edition on special occasions.
More importantly, the site has prompted The Union Leader to provide local coverage in two of its four communities. The site’s founder’s attitude, however, is …”too little, too late.”
“If they had this three years ago, we wouldn’t exist, says Managing Editor Maureen Mann, who spoke last week at Knight Batten’s Awards Symposium at The National Press Club in Washington D.C. “But now we know how to do this.”
Mann feels that the typical voice of a citizen far surpasses the Union Leader’s professional journalism. “It took people a couple of years to realize that we don’t send reporters” when a news event occurs. They are the reporters.” But now, the site has an 1.6 “reporters” for every 100 residents. That’s going to be hard to overcome.
We wish nothing but the best to The Forum and its contributors — innovative community journalism is something we applaud — but your posting is far from an accurate picture of local news coverage. As a few examples, the New Hampshire Union Leader is not family owned, is not “notorious,” and for decades has had two or three correspondents covering the towns in question. Local coverage has historically been a strength, not a weakness, of our newspaper. A quick check of our database shows more than 1,000 significant stories from 2005 that mentioned at least one of those towns; that count excludes sports, weddings and news briefs. It is not necessary to misrepresent the quality of a good local newspaper when publicizing an ambitious local web site.
Perkins noted to me in a private email that The Union Leader is considered respectable enough for CNN and ABC to partner with it for election coverage. Let’s just say that’s good enough for me. I shouldn’t have said they have notorious coverage, circa 2007.
He also says there is definitely “church and state” between editorial and opinion. I accept that, and apologize for possibly impugning the writing staff of the paper.
For sure, what happened, historically, is no longer relevant. The original publisher, Bill Loeb, is long dead. He may not have contributed to the democratic process, especially the way he went after Ed Muskie in the 1972 election. But it is no longer relevant, even if a Loeb is still running the paper.
For that matter, the original scion of the Chandler family wasn’t so great, either. HIs grandson, Otis Chandler, however, made The LA Times a great newspaper.
As for what The Forum’s Maureen Mann said about the paper and its local coverage….it is probably just two different opinions here. All agree that The Forum is doing a neat job and is a great model for community journalism. PK