New Report: D.C. Reporting for Hometowns Vanishing

There’s a changing media landscape in Washington, and it doesn’t bode well for the public.

As I reported last week, media companies across the country have scaled back their D.C. staff and even closed their Washington bureaus, getting rid of the reporters who covered policy and politicians from a local angle.

This week, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and journalist Tyler Marshall issued a report offering new evidence that a watchdog press corps covering the issues that matter to local folks miles from the capital is disappearing fast.The three-month study assessing the changing nature of journalism and national news reporting from D.C. reached three conclusions:

  • Since the 1980s, the number of newspapers covering Congress has fallen by two-thirds.
  • Narrowly focused special interest or niche media, such as newsletters and specialty newspapers, have taken the place of the mainstream press.
  • Foreign media outlets have dramatically increased in Washington.

The report’s biggest takeaway isn’t the number of journalists who have been pulled from the D.C. beat; rather, “The real story is in where those journalists work and the kind of coverage they are providing.”

The implications of specialty publications and newsletters outnumbering newspapers that serve local interests are serious. Communities no longer have scouts watching out for their best interests in the heart of the political establishment. With fewer reporters sending stories back home about their communities’ elected officials, holding those officials accountable becomes increasingly difficult. With fewer reporters following the trail of corporate lobbyists, holding corporations accountable becomes nearly impossible.

The report put it this way: “Elites who are plugged into the new fragmented niche media of Washington will know how that government is growing and what it means, and they will be learning it through new media channels. Their fellow citizens who rely on local or network television or their daily newspapers, however, will be harder pressed to learn what their elected representatives are doing.”

In other words, our media system is becoming more class-based than ever, allowing only the people in-the-know, with the dough, to stay informed.