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June 9, 2011

RIP? News Coverage of Local Government

By Rob Kall

The news today is that there has been a severe drop in the coverage of local government by local newspapers. That's bad news for democracy. Accountability depends upon the sunlight that the media cast upon the workings of government. Opednews has an answer

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The news today is that there has been a severe drop in the coverage of local government by local newspapers. 

The NY Times reports, in an article,  A Federal Study Finds That Local Reporting Has Waned 
Coverage of state governments and municipalities has receded at such an alarming pace that it has left government with more power than ever to set the agenda and have assertions unchallenged, concluded the study, which is to be released on Thursday.

"In many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting," said the study, which was ordered by theFederal Communications Commission and written by Steven Waldman, a former journalist for Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. "The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism -- going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy -- is in some cases at risk at the local level."

That's bad news for democracy. Accountability depends upon the sunlight that the media cast upon the workings of government.


Newspapers are shutting down or cutting local coverage reporting (image from flickr by  banlon1964)

Opednews has long been designed to support local coverage of local news. We have a tag for every state and county and major city in the US and you can easily add one for your town, even your neighborhood. We have tags for the Canadian and Australian Provinces and we're happy to add tags for local towns or provinces anywhere in the world.

My point is that for years, Opednews.com has been built to support local news and coverage. We invite you to tap the power of the site to cast light on your local stories. There's no cost and you never know what reporting on a story thought to be growing like a mushroom in the dark can do to corruption or malfeasance.

Opednews is not like other sites that just take big articles by big writers. We take articles from the bottom up, because we believe that there is value in the perspective of everyone and anyone. Yes, we do curate our content, but it is extraordinarily open.

If you believe in our work and value what we do, please make a generous donation to help us keep on doing the work. Click here to contribute to helping us make a difference today. We're now using a new, friendlier, easier donation system.


Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel


Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.


His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.


Join the conversation:


On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution


and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation





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