Elections and Wedding Dresses: Tuesday at the Grand Rapids Press
In the 1940 film “His Girl Friday,” a send-up of the newspaper business, an editor played by Cary Grant is attempting to make over the front page to fit in a breaking news story. Here’s his string of last-minute decisions:
No, no, never mind the Chinese earthquake for heaven’s sake…Look, I don’t care if there’s a million dead…No, no, junk the Polish Corridor…Take all those Miss America pictures off Page Six…Take Hitler and stick him on the funny page…No, no, leave the rooster story alone – that’s human interest.
Ah, yes, the rooster story. Those of us who have endured 15 months of the Grand Rapids Press under Editor Paul Keep know that rooster story very well. Except in our case, it’s been the arrow-wounded duck story….the injured bald eagle story…and the urban chickens debate, complete with chicken puns galore.
I think we can safely guess that Paul Keep has a thing about birds. What he doesn’t seem very interested in are hard news stories. Or elections, for that matter.
As GRIID has tracked the 2010 election cycle, it has documented the flimsy coverage of candidates, issues, and has also noted problems with individual features such as the Voters’ Guide, rife with paid political advertising and skimpy on information for crucial votes such as the ballot proposals.
What makes the whole thing even more inscrutable is how Keep continues to insist that local news is the Grand Rapids Press’s reason for being, as he explained in his December 24, 2009 column. A reader wrote in, “…the GR Press is failing to cover, let alone investigate, serious issues we now face in America,” and named several current national stories.
Editor Keep responded: While I understand your concerns, the issues you raised were not local issues, which is what the Grand Rapids Press reporters focus on. For coverage of national and international issues, we rely mainly on the Associated Press…The bulk of our news pages are focused on local news and information and it is in-depth local content you cannot find in other area media outlets.
OK. Now let’s talk disconnects. On Tuesday, November 2, Grand Rapids and Michigan voters had a number of important decisions to make. They had to choose a new governor. There were races for local district seats in the House of Representatives. There were critical State Supreme Court races. You’d think that there would be plenty of that “in-depth local content” to be explored in the newspaper that day.
Keep could have chosen to have a reporter recap the races, or print an abbreviated voters’ guide to help people at the polls. He could have done on-the-street interviews, or done a story about volunteers who work at polling places in the area. He could have covered predicted voter turnout, and how the local votes would have statewide or national effect. He did none of those things.
So apparently Paul Keep doesn’t consider local elections “local news.” Or perhaps, unlike the always-appealing rooster story, elections just lack that zing that he looks for in his above-the-fold stories. Elections don’t sell papers. So what does?
Princess Diana’s wedding dress.
Incredibly, on the day of this long-talked-about midterm election, the front page, above- the-fold story in the Press was “The Most Famous Dress in the World.” Yes, the former Princess of Wales’ wedding dress has arrived in town, with its 25-foot silk train and its own personal attendants. On page 2, not missing a chance for follow-up, the Press ran a second story about die-hard Diana fans. Local fans, that is to say.
The other two front-page stories were about Wyoming banning medical pot and a protest at Central Michigan University.
Paging through the front section, I looked for something—anything—about the election. There were stories about teachers’ contracts. A rape trial. Vandalism by Calvin College students (they beheaded a fiberglass giraffe). Zeeland’s “fog” problem caused by pollution from a power plant cooling tower. Local homes sales falling again. On the always-buried-in-the-back national news page, there was a tiny AP wire story of one paragraph called “Tips for election watchers.” And that was that.
In the early 19th Century, Thomas Jefferson wrote quite a bit about the importance of an informed electorate and how democracy would not work without a free press. In one letter, he said, “The information of the people at large can alone make them safe as they are the sole depository of our political and religious freedom.” He also said, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their attention, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
It’s clear that without good, unbiased information, no one has true freedom to make up his or her own mind about how to change our country for the good of the people. But in the mind of Editor Paul Keep, this election was over before a single vote was cast. Time to move on to more “interesting” stories. As a Press headline writer might say, it’s clear our newspaper definitely laid an egg on this year’s election coverage. But you can be assured that it will keep you well informed about any wounded birds in the area for the foreseeable future.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
I agree with Jefferson (and indeed, how can one argue with him?). Keeping the population informed is a high human good, and the GR Press is failing us.
I received an e-mail from Paul Keep this morning about this article. Here’s the text of his message:
Kate: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I always value hearing from our readers. Of course, I have a different take on this and believe The Press provided its readers the best local election coverage this year among the various media in this area. I’m sure you agree with me that you cannot fairly judge our election coverage by looking at one day. Our team of reporters and editors did a great job all year. The year-long Michigan 10.0 series helped readers focus on the state’s big issues and how to solve them as they considered who to select as our next governor. We covered all of the local races and made editorial board endorsements in many of them after hours of talking with the candidates and researching the issues. I guess we can agree to disagree on this one. Paul.
Kate, thanks for your succinct description of the GRPress and election coverage. I read the Press daily for three months leading up to the elections and the coverage was not helpful. I went to several other sources for information. Additionally, it’s difficult to respect a newspaper that endorses candidates.
It’s good to know that Mr Keep appreciates his reporters; it’s discouraging to hear his condescension toward you by suggesting you are judging coverage by one day. It happens, however, that the day you chose was a good example!
The Grand Rapids Press is right: they did provide the best election coverage in the area. None of the “independent media” in town from GRIID to The Rapidian and everything in between could compete (or chose not to). Everyone’s going to have to keep going back to the Press every election unless the independent media steps up its game. Criticizing the Press is easy (as most of the GRIID coverage of the election did): it’s a whole other thing to actually challenge them and make them irrelevant.
I see that as the big challenge that faces independent media, along with the question of whether left-leaning media like GRIID (which frequently criticizes capitalism) should even bother spending time on elections when all the candidates are at odds with what seems to be the general political sentiment on this site (can’t tell for sure though because there is no statement of politics/values/etc).
Elections are junk. The newspaper exists to sell itself. See all those trees? Yeah, that’s an effing forest.
Y Not–GRIID’s chief goals, as you can find on the statement about the organization, are 1) to teach media literacy, 2) to analyze how the media can misinform the public on critical issues through presentation, editorializing, etc., 3) to act as a media watchdog of news in the area, and finally, 4) to start working as an Indy media producer of news, interviews, and documentaries.
If you look at the 2010 election cycle, you’ll find that GRIID published 51 articles covering this range mentioned above. It analyzed where local media fell short; it objected to the framing and presentation of news that misinformed by leaving out critical information; and there were news articles about various Congressional races, appearances by candidates, reports on who was receiving endorsements and money from which area corporations and benefactors.
Since analyzing and criticizing mainstream media in order to help people see how media manipulates information is one of GRIID’s main goals, it’s completely appropriate that some of the articles did that. I think that if you look at the entire list, you’ll see that the articles fall pretty much evenly into the categories described in the mission statement.
Also, please keep in mind that all of those articles were researched and written by a small volunteer staff.