When no news isn't good news

It's not your imagination, we're not covering local news like we used to.

As an industry, that is, at least according to a Federal Communications Commission report released last week.

The FCC wanted to know how all the media business upheaval in recent years has affected local and state government reporting.

The short answer is that even though it's easier than ever to find information online, including information about your own neighborhood, there's an increasing shortage of local, professional watchdog-type reporting. That's true, they write, even with the dramatic increase in non-profit media and reporting groups (such as The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism). The report's authors don't mince words about what they think it means for communities:

This is likely to lead to the kinds of problems that are, not surprisingly, associated with a lack of accountability-more government waste, more local corruption, less effective schools, and other serious community problems. 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.

There were only about about 41,600 people working in newspaper newsrooms in 2010, compared to 55,000 newsies in 2006. Not only that, the journalists who are left have seen their job descriptions continually expand.

They're not just digging and reporting anymore -- they're tweeting and blogging and shooting video and doing standups for TV. Long story short is it's much less likely today than even a few years ago that a trained reporter is doing the digging required to hold government and institutions accountable.

So while you'll have no trouble finding restaurant hours or school closing information, there's no guarantee anyone is looking behind the curtain, say at restaurant inspections or school board decisions.

I'm biased, of course, but it's an informed bias. I see every day just how much work it takes for my colleagues to tease out fact from rumor, to get to the bottom of what's going on in the name of the public interest. And I'm scared right along with the report's authors about what will happen in those communities where no one is left to mind the store.

Again, from the report:

In other words, we find ourselves in an unusual moment when ignoring the ailments of local media will mean that serious harm may be done to our communities-but paying attention to them will enable Americans to develop, literally, the best media system the nation has ever had.

Not to turn this into a hug-your-local-journalist post, but it bears repeating that behind the kajillion words you search on a zillion Web sites, there are a few thousand dedicated (and sometimes awfully tired) professional journalists. And until we come up with a better way to make sure people don't abuse power behind closed doors (good luck with that one), it isn't all that simplistic to say that as our newsrooms go, so goes our democracy.