[seanot]

The author cites research that ties a downfall in civic engagement to the demise of local news coverage. While I find this correlation to be obvious (to my line of thinking), she assigns no responsibility for this demise to her peers -- the ones writing news and opinion.

In the large Midwestern cities in which I have lived, local newspapers generally choose to align themselves on the side of local governments and chambers-of-commerce on virtually every new development subsidy or tax deal regardless of the costs to be incurred by local residents and businesses and/or the sketchiness of the scheme.

Readers look to the fourth estate for a voice when elected representatives collude with special interests. If they are merely mouthpieces and cheerleaders for those in power, readers will look elsewhere or disengage.

[dredmorbius]

I.F. Stone had a great deal to say on journalistic independence in a 1974 public television interview on "Day at Night".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g

Small-town papers are beholden to small-town interests. Stone notes that the large-city and national dailies (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, possibly the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal at the itme) were freed of dependence on any one advertiser (or political interest). That may have been a peculiar circumstance of the 1960s and 1970s.

[oever]

The last observation in that interview is still current.

> The president, irrespective of who he is, today, is so powerful that the temptations of the office for good or evil are too great for any one man. I think we ought to begin to dismantle the office. I think we ought to have a head of state symbolizing the country around whom the natural feeling of patriotism and reverence accrue and separate him from the head of the government.

[erikpukinskis]

This will happen naturally as small scale self e-gocernance takes on more and more responsibility. As the responsibilities of the state dry up, city, state, and federal government figures naturally become more figureheads. It will be a race to who has the best parades and funnest hats.