Many resources are needed to download a project. Please understand that we have to compensate our server costs. Thank you in advance. Project price only 1 $
You can buy this project and download/modify it how often you want.
As Newspapers Cut Costs, a Thinning of the Guard Among Albanyýs Press Corps Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Where reporters once vied for prime seats in the Capitols press room in Albany, empty desks reflect a trend of newspapers cutting back on statehouse reporters. By Published: October 7, 2008 ALBANY Desk space was once such a commodity in the cramped press quarters inside the State Capitol that a special committee would convene to decide which reporters would get the coveted desks in the main room and which would be relegated to the outer offices. Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times With The New York Sun going out of business last week, five newspapers have now left the Capitol in less than two years. That committee does not meet much these days. It doesn’t really need to: there are now just about as many vacant desks as occupied ones. One more desk was freed up last week when The New York Sun ceased publishing, becoming the fifth newspaper to exit Albany in less than two years. The Staten Island Advance, The Post-Standard of Syracuse, The Daily Gazette of Schenectady and The Times Herald-Record of Middletown have all removed their statehouse correspondents from the Capitol since the beginning of 2007. The long, slow bleed of reporters out of New York’s capital has become more like a geyser in recent years as news organizations try to reckon with shrinking advertising revenue and falling circulation. This journalistic exodus raises questions about whether politicians and special interests in Albany a place with tremendous power and a history of how that power can corrupt will be given the scrutiny they merit. “It’s discouraging, because there’s just so much power in the state government,” said Evan Cornog, associate dean at the Graduate School of Journalism and publisher of The . If newspapers are not reporting on statehouses, “it deprives journalism of one of its sources of legitimacy: to be that watchdog,” he added. “And it’s not as if we’re functioning in a transparent environment. People are working hard to conceal stuff.” In 1981, the Legislative Correspondents Association, the organization of statehouse journalists in Albany, had 59 members from 31 news outlets. By 2001, the number of journalists had fallen to 51 and the number of news organizations to 29. At the beginning of this year, there were 42 journalists and 27 member organizations. With the exception of Buffalo, Watertown and Albany itself, no city outside the New York metropolitan area has a newspaper with a dedicated, full-time correspondent in the Capitol. The Gannett News Service has three full-time reporters covering the Capitol, but their correspondents are responsible for feeding all six Gannett papers in the state and are not assigned to cover legislation that affects a specific city or region. Betty Flood, the owner of the Cuyler News Service, whose reporters supply articles out of Albany for various financial and trade publications, can recall a far different era. Still reporting after 54 years in the Capitol, Ms. Flood, 75, is the longest-serving correspondent in the association and can recall when women were not allowed to join. “You just had so many papers,” she said. Gesturing to a section of the hallway outside the State Assembly chambers that is now just an empty corner with a window, Ms. Flood said, “This was my office.” The walls, she explained, were knocked down long ago when there were far more reporters roaming the halls. “I worked for The American Banker. Gone,” she said. “I worked for The Bond Buyer. They’re gone, too.” The trend in Albany parallels a nationwide decline in the number of news organizations that are committed to staffing statehouse bureaus. According to , the number of journalists covering a state capitol as a full-time job fell to 510 in 2002 from 543 in 2000. While the publication counted a slight increase in full-time statehouse reporters in 2003, the last year it conducted a survey, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number continues to fall. A separate review by , the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, found that in 2007 there were just 407 reporters covering a statehouse as their full-time job. The said that it had noticed fewer articles about state politics in the news media and fewer reporters applying for credentials at state capitols. Judy Patrick, managing editor of The Daily Gazette, said the decision to close its Albany bureau was difficult but necessary. “We were faced with layoffs; I had to cut positions,” she said. The newspaper now relies on The Associated Press to cover much of the day-to-day business at the Capitol but uses one of its own reporters to cover bigger stories. The compromise seems to be working so far, she said. “But I would rather have a reporter there.” For many news organizations, staffing a statehouse bureau was long viewed as a necessity something more essential to coverage than having a Washington bureau, which was considered more of a trophy investment. Compared with sending a correspondent to Washington, opening a statehouse bureau was also more practical because the business of state legislatures is often more relevant than what happens in Congress. The statehouse correspondents association in Albany dates to 1900, when a group of reporters decided to host a farewell dinner for Gov. , who was leaving the state capital for Washington to become William McKinley’s vice president. It is an organization known for clinging hard to vestiges of its past. Women were banned from being members during World War II, a policy that was not reversed until the late 1960s. Women were also not allowed to participate in the organization’s until 1972. Now a third of the association’s members are women. But through much of the 1980s, the organization still had the feel of a stodgy gentleman’s club. Nightly poker games with legislative staffers and lobbyists were a revered tradition, as was “the library,” a metal cart of liquor that was wheeled out every afternoon. Today the liquor cart is gone. The poker table still sits on the second level of the association’s office space a balcony known as “the shelf” that looks down on the main press room floor but it is covered by a piece of particleboard stained with coffee mug rings. Downstairs on the main level, the sets of wood and brass plaques that hang from a wall on the first floor name various recipients of the association’s reporting awards. But they read like a death notices column for the newspaper business. The New York World-Telegram and Sun: closed for good in 1967 after various iterations of it failed to attract enough readers. The Long Island Press: shuttered in 1977. The Knickerbocker News of Albany: merged out of existence in 1988. “It’s like tumbleweed should be blowing around here,” said Kyle Hughes, a reporter for Nysnys News, a subscription Web site that posts videos of press conferences and other statehouse events. Some newspapers use Mr. Hughes’s service in lieu of sending a reporter to an event in Albany. But whether Nysnys News and other services like it in other states are the chicken or the egg contributing to the decline in the number of statehouse reporters actually reporting from statehouses is a difficult question to answer. Mr. Hughes sits in the press room next to the desk that The Sun used to occupy. A promotional edition of The Sun from 2002 announcing its first edition is taped to the back of the desk. One of the headlines reads, “A Fresh Voice Is Said to Be Needed in City.” A version of this article appeared in print on October 8, 2008, on page A29 of the New York edition. Related Searches MOST POPULAR Also in Theater: Advertisements Free Trial - print edition on PC. Exact replica of The Times Inside NYTimes.com
