Our speaker was Marc H. Pfeiffer. Marc is the Senior Policy Fellow and Faculty Researcher, Bloustein Local Government, Center for Urban Policy Research. Prior to his retirement, Marc spent 37 years in New Jersey local government administration, having served as a municipal administrator in several municipalities, and 26 years in the Division of Local Government Services, the state’s local government oversight agency. At DLGS he served as Deputy Director for 14 years, and periodically as Acting Director. Marc discussed the state of local news reporting in New Jersey. He began by noting how all local news media has shrunk materially over the past twenty or so years. Digital communications and digital on-line shopping have severely cut into the print media’s ability to survive, especially at the local level. Print media always required advertising from local merchants to support its capital-intensive operations. Amazon, et.al., has eaten into the model. He went on to discuss the obvious negative implications of not having adequate local reporting, especially as it relates to government oversight – who’s keeping our elected officials honest? He summarized the problem by quoting the masthead from the Washington Post – ‘Democracy dies in the dark.’
However, he was becoming more optimistic. He believes local news coverage is bottoming out. The media is adapting. Print is migrating to a digital format and the publishers are beginning to figure out how to operate within the digital world and how to develop digital advertising with local businesses. There are different constructs – for profit and not-for-profit. And clearly, the curation of content remains an issue. Nevertheless, Marc believes local news is beginning to recover, albeit slowly.
During Q&A there was much discussion of bias. He noted engines like Facebook, Instagram, and similar aggregators simply sweep up whatever is in the domain. The information is not curated. The reader is then subject to whatever bias is contained in the content. So, checking the source is critical to staying informed with facts versus opinion.
It was an informative and enlightening presentation – much appreciated by the Rotarians.