Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Please limit local perspective to "reader-submitted comments," thank you

This kind of thing is inside baseball: the journalism guild recognizing local reporters for stories they cover. Without taking anything away from the reporter's grunt work, I have to say that the national organization's justification for the award--"news coverage was balanced, unbiased and included reader-submitted comments"--are not uncontested by people like me who actually live in Nashville and who are affected by the reporting. I've already documented that the City Paper reporting on English Only was not always truthful and that it was sometimes uncritically preconceived and biased. But journalists have their own reasons for fist-tapping one another and they tend to ignore counter examples outside their guild. Unless laypeople provide evocative subjects for a money-making story, then we are nothing more than readers with subjective opinions fit for their comments sections.

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