Blind Prophecy

Admittedly, my newspaper doesn’t reach a very large audience when compared with, say, the New York Times. In fact, compared to Salt Lake’s two major dailies, we barely register on the total readership available in our area. However, I’m trying not to be too filled with resentment and anger today.

See, the story about Beano and her challenge to the Utah DMV rules against using “gay” in positive messages on personalized license plates has been picked up by every national news feed and wire service out there. If you search for “utah” and “gay” on these sites (which, as you can imagine, I do daily), you’re going to come across dozens of articles linking to Beano’s smiling face.

What has me pissed off is that Beano told me about her challenge to the DMV in April or May. I was asked not to write anything about is “until we know it’s going to go.” Once Beano and the ACLU had a pretty good idea they were going to win, I was asked not to write anything “until they got the written ruling back.” Then I was asked not to write anything “until the ACLU drafts an official press release.”

Now, because of our two-week news cycle, every paper in town will be done with the story before we get anything into print.

Now, here’s why I’m upset. Every week I get begged to run storys about useless crap. “Oh, please write about the fact we’re going to have our next meeting outside under a tree instead of in teh air-conditioned meeting room. Don’t you think that’s unique? Don’t you think that’s newsworthy? Please, validate us by pretending we’ve done something interesting!!!”

And yet, when there’s something that really is newsworthy, interesting, and worthwhile — it’s all about getting it into the mainstream press for the widest audience possible.

I wish I could say that this case was unique, but it’s not. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen again and again in Las Vegas and locally. Not just the gay press, either. Small alternative papers get passed over for news tips that would validly appeal to their readership because the large daily will cover it. Nobody thinks to call the Spanish-language paper when the rally is being held about an immigration bill.

It’s no wonder we members of the “niche” and “alternative” press get so jaded. When the news is big and important, we get passed by for “the scoop” but when the news is minor and not worth the column inches, we get harrassed about paying attention. This is the third time this year I’ve rightfully had “the scoop” on a story but sat on it because the people involved wouldn’t participate in an interview until after the dailies picked up the story.

I want to send out a memo to all the activist organizations: Next time you want to use my paper as a vehicle to fundraise from my community, I’ll be happy to run a story–after I’ve seen it in the dailies!

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys