Half of the population of the 29th district reads one paper, Gannett's Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle. In the coming weeks, I'm going to ask some hard questions about the D&C, and show how the 29th is affected by its lackluster performance in a number of areas. To kick things off, I thought it would be interesting to hear another voice on the state of newspapers in Rochester:
Emigres from less conservative climes find the Rochester newspapers conspicuously lacking in any semblance of metropolitan journalism. They find it far simpler to compare them with the weekly newspapers of the small town -- only with more advertising. Robust phrasing, critical estimates of civic efforts, personalities, or mores, are frowned upon. [...]
They are without serious competition. There is no necessity to crusade and therefore increase reader interest and circulation. Thus they content themselves with the role of mere documentation. As one critic puts it -- "The dullest stuff from the AP wires (all of which you heard on the eleven p.m. newscasts the night previous), a puff for the Republican administration, a report on the activities of four garden clubs, the list of speeders and four columns of obituaries."
This estimate is more accurate than cruel. Fortunately for those who must read the customary comics and day's inaccurate weather forecast, [...] there is one rewarding feature -- both newspapers have fast-moving, easy-reading and nearly complete sports coverage.
This quote is from the book
Smugtown, U.S.A, published 50 years ago by Rochester newspaperman and gadfly Curt Gerling. When he wrote, Rochester was a prosperous town dominated by Kodak. Much has changed since then. A firm he knew as Haloid, ("obsessed with an idea called 'Xerography' which if you can believe what you hear, is a coming thing") has risen and fallen. Rochester has gone from "safely Republican" ("even the moderately intelligent realize that big business and Republicanism mix even more magnificently than scotch and soda") to a mix of city Democrats and county Republicans.
Yet, amidst all this change, most of what Gerling writes about Gannett is as true today as it was 50 years ago. Since the Times-Union closed over a decade ago, only the use of the plural form keeps the following analysis from sounding as if it were written yesterday:
Whatever may be the weakness of the Gannett publications as newspapers, they are still a monopoly and as such we are stuck with them. [...] [T]oo often what seems like news to them is not news to the national radio or television commentators nor the New York Times. Rochester has not only learned to live with it but expects it.
Though Rochester is feeling less smug nowadays, I don't think its main newspaper has gotten the message. I'm not deluded enough to believe I can change the D&C, but I hope to point out how it could change, and why the 29th deserves better.