To be fair to Click and Clack, they're not really car ADVOCATES.
They fix cars in their day job, and they talk about cars in their
column and radio show, but they don't seem to be in love with the
things.
On their website, for example, they have a "guide to better fuel
economy (http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/fueleconomy/); their
prime advice is to drive less -- "walk, bicycle, crawl or take the
subway." The usual fuel economy tips -- e.g., "Get your car serviced
regularly" -- are way at the bottom of the list. In a way, Click and
Clack are there to balance the rest of the Automobile section, which
really does show an unhealthy erotic attachment to automobiles.
But I agree that coverage of land use/transportation issues is
inadequate in the Madison papers. If you sat down with the editors
to discuss this problem, I suspect that they would sympathize, but
they would talk about economics. Newspapers everywhere are going
broke and laying off staff to make ends meet -- the LA Times managing
editor was fired last week over this issue. It would be hard to
convince a small-market paper to spend money to put a reporter on
this beat unless they can be persuaded that thoughtful stories on
land use and transportation would sell papers.
That's our challenge, I think. Can we persuade the Cap Times that
there are potential readers out there who are more interested in
zoning and planning and bicycles than in Jamie Lynn Spears'
pregnancy? That's a hard sell, I fear, but it might be worth the
effort.
On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:04 PM, B.C. Brown wrote:
I think the coverage of land use and transportation is generally
spotty and superficial in the local daily papers.
They're complex and important issues of our times, but there's no
reporter assigned to, say, really figure out and explain the
mysteries of the state transportation budget. Where's the land use/
transportation desk? Might some space be spared from the sports
section? Entertainment?
Coverage seems to occur most often in the opinion pages.
I've written to the Cap Times about this and have also requested a
bicycling and/or transit column to balance out Click and Clack and
the car reviews. (I love Dar's new column on Dane 101, but why not
something in the regular paper?)
No response on the land use/transportation coverage and regarding
the car columns, was told those items are part of the advertising
operation. (So maybe the local bike manufacturers could go in
together to purchase their own bike section and column? Even if
it's just one page rather than several?)
Some of my emails to the Cap Times have admittedly been a little
hot-headed, though. Maybe somebody cooler-headed would get more of
a response.
Bridget/B.C.
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