Media
I was thinking in Omaha over the weekend about the upcoming local elections and the media. It got me to wondering how often the various local elected officials appear in the newspaper, be it quotes in stories, op/eds they wrote, letters to the editor that mentioned them, etc.
So I decided to run a search to come up with those numbers for the Orange County Commissioners, Chapel Hill Town Council, and Carrboro Board of Aldermen. For the Orange County Commissioners the search ran from December 5th, 2006 when Mike Nelson took office through today. For the Chapel Hill Town Council it ran from December 5th, 2005 when Bill Thorpe and Laurin Easthom took office through today. For the Aldermen it ran from February 15th, 2006 (shortly after Dan Coleman was appointed) through today.
Here are the results:
Chapel Hill Herald/Durham Herald-Sun:
Moses Carey 56
Barry Jacobs 31
Alice Gordon 25
Mike Nelson 24
Valerie Foushee 11
It's been days since we criticized the local media, so let's make sure they know we're still paying attention. :-) The Chapel Hill News has added a weekly video clip to it's web site. The current show features Leah Friedman reading the paper's recent headlines and Meiling Arounnarath talking about the Carrboro mural with Jenny Chan.
I like how the video personalizes the reporters and some of the people in their stories. My only suggestion is to create a feed so that people can subscribe to video updates without visiting the site to see whether they've updated.
Wow. Today I discovered the Counter-Cartographies Collective, a group at UNC using mapping and visual information to help us see our environment in a new light. One of their major works so far is the "disOrientation Guide" produced last fall. It's two poster-sized pages packed with useful and insightful content. Although it's designed for newcomers, any local veteran will learn something new from the new perspectives on things we thought we knew, and from the hidden information uncovered in these maps.
In addition to being a fascinating drama, the John McCormick saga is also a cautionary tale for us. I never met the man, but I was long aware that something was not right with him. I knew for a fact that he was a slum lord with properties in my neighborhood, and I had also heard rumors that he was involved with the crack trade.
Now of course these were just rumors, and I was in no position to do anything about them. But if I knew a little, I have to think the Chapel Hill Carrboro Board of Education knew a lot more. It's hard to believe that this man, now known for shady real estate deals and thought to be living the life of a fugitive drug kingpin on the lam, was responsible for legally advising our school system. That concerns me. I always wondered why the school board did not take action to remove this questionable character. In hindsight I can now say they absolutely should have done something, and that they may have been putting our schools at risk by continuing to work with him for many years.
Fiona Morgan has an article in last week's Independent Weekly about the much-discussed rumor that The Herald-Sun is considering ending publication of The Chapel Hill Herald as a separate paper.
Herald-Sun Editor Robert Ashley confirms that the paper is considering such a move, but he said that news of The Chapel Hill Herald's demise is "premature."
- Independent Weekly: News: Orange: Herald-Sun owners weighing fate of The Chapel Hill Herald, 5/2/07
Fiona always does a good job covering media ownership issues, which is why I was surprised that she didn't mention the Carrboro Citizen in her listing of other media that covers southern Orange County. True, it's not daily, but it is the local antidote to mega media chains like Paxton which bought the Herald-Sun in late 2004 and proceeded to slash and burn, firing 80 of 351 employees and making themselves more enemies in this already competitive market.
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