Political Coverage Going from Bad to Worse

In the lead up to the June 10th primary, I often lamented the lack of solid mainstream political coverage in Maine. Despite having a hotly contested Democratic congressional race and a reasonably competitive Republican contest, there was a surprising lack of television time and print space devoted to those two races. Nearly half of the articles about the congressional race that were featured in Maine newspapers were simply cookie cutter profiles of the eight candidates vying for the 1st CD seat. The other articles generally lacked depth, although there was interesting article in the Portland Press Herald from time to time. 

Well, now this week we found out that the Portland Press Herald is making another round of staff layoffs. The political department is going to take a serious hit, with two veteran reporters accepting buyouts from the Press Herald and another reporter being laid off. In addition, the paper will be closing its Washington, DC and Augusta news bureaus. The political beat writers being laid off are Paul Carrier, Kevin Wack, and Jonathan Kaplan. While none of these reporters were fantastic (and Kaplan was almost certainly subpar), they have been writing a large percentage of the political articles that run in Maine newspapers during the past couple of years. Wack, in particular, wrote some stories that effectively highlighted the tension between the different candidates in the 1st CD race.  But now, somehow, the political coverage that was already weak in the mainstream Maine media is about to get worse.  

I would guess that the Press Herald will augment its political coverage in two ways. First, I suspect that you will see the paper running less articles in general. But, of course, the Press Herald cannot just outright eliminate its political coverage because it has lost its most veteran political beat reporters. The paper has already said it will rely more heavily on the Kennebec Journal staff for coverage of state legislative activity in Augusta. For its other political coverage, including the all important 1st CD congressional race, the paper will have to rely on new reporters to write the political stories. The quality of the articles is going to suffer and you will almost certainly see even more poorly constructed, badly researched stories. These reporters are going to be doing cookie cutter stories that do not hold candidates accountable whatsoever. That is not necessarily their fault, but is the way their job is designed. Most likely, they will have no special training in political science and will lack much knowledge about Maine politics. Furthermore, they will be put under additional strain to pump out stories as they have to shoulder an increased workload after all the layoffs at the Press Herald.

The online blogosphere and the public at large is going to have step up and uncover the dirt on these candidates. You can bet a pretty penny that the TV networks and newspapers will not. Personally, I'm ready for the job...