Tampa just might
have as many journalists visiting the Republican convention as there are
delegates. Fifteen thousand was the number I saw in a Baltimore Sun story yesterday.
One would wonder why the need for so many reporters when political conventions
today have become so highly scripted, with access to the big newsmakers tightly
controlled. And we already know the outcome of this convention, with the
nominees determined months ago in the
primaries.
A look at the Baltimore Sun sort of answers
the question of why so many reporters to cover the same event. In
addition to the main news story about the keynote speeches, there were also a
few stories that had a decidedly local angle… comments from Maryland
delegates at the convention, comments from a former Maryland Democrat governor.
So while the networks and wire services and the online sites like Politico and HuffPo cover the big speeches, reporters from thousands of local papers, TV and radio stations are there to find local stories. And as so many surveys have shown, local is what we want from our local media.
Fifteen thousand journalists. Who said local news is dying?
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