Managing Editor Robert Cox of New Rochelle's Talk of the Sound yesterday wrote an Open Letter to Chuck Strome, New Rochelle’s City Manager, advising his right to be fairly treated as a member of media, commensurate to equal footing with the Journal News, WVOX-1460 AM radio, Cable News 12 Westchester, among others. Since the onset of the Internet, government, taking a page from a threatened media establishment, quickly recognized the impact of the Internet and the many hyperlocal reporters who would challenge the status quo. It did not take too long for the term “blog” to become the latest four-letter epithet. Challenging the stale and stagnant media landscape by infusing a “new voice” into the media landscape bloggers charged forward undeterred and unafraid. Media had won the first round in casting aspersions about bloggers. As in every frontier, the first explorers’ attempt to define the Internet was cursory. Time permitted greater exploration and introspection. Today we continue to explore the parameters of the Internet and its role and impact vis-a-vis the mainstream media base line.
While mainstream media grapples in defining itself, it attempts to fend off the media “interlopers” by excluding bloggers their rightful place in news gathering and reporting. The blogosphere rests on the veracity built about those who make comment on their respective blogs on every issue of concern to the community about which they report. Their value is elevated to greater prominence as mainstream media recoil from markets deemed no longer financially viable or worthy of their resources. It is mainstream media’s shrinking from many communities that have disheveled the media landscape. Filling the void left by lackluster media interest is evident everywhere. Mr Cox speaks to it in his letter with reference to New Rochelle. Turning Mount Vernon into nothing more than a second thought or worse still, a police blotter is an ache demanding a more vigilant bedside manner, not for government per say, but rather the constituency they represent. Mainstream media has abandoned Mount Vernon. The City of Yonkers chose over five ears ago to not permit access of the Yonkers Tribune website from Yonkers City Hall and from the Yonkers Board of Education. Yonkers Tribune is to this day not permitted to be accessed. Only a few years ago, the Westchester Guardian newsweekly had its newspapers and some of its newsboxes stolen at the behest of Yonkers City Hall operatives. Not a word from anyone. The silence had been deafening, but no more. Enough is enough.
Some government localities within Westchester County and elsewhere have chosen to trash the United States Constitution in order to forceably have its way. It is doable when there is not one “sheriff" about. Media, known as the Fourth Estate, abrogated its role to criticize such egregious conduct by appeasing such oppressive conduct in silence lest they be next to bear the brunt of their wrath. “My way or the highway” resonates loudly within the borders of Yonkers, the fourth largest city in New York State.
In juxtaposition to abandonment of many communities in Westchester County and elsewhere, bloggers are filling the void of abandonment by becoming the new town square. The discourse permitted in that virtual venue permits posters to comment, by name or anonymously, to passionately engage a populous long ago jettisoned from the political discourse by mainstream media. Today the so-called “coffee shop" on the web,from which people sip the caffeinated beverage at work, at home, or on vacation, distill the news, input exemplary comment or something less so. It is a learning process that molds and melds a community of concern for one’s “home”.
Threatened are those that hide behind terms of wanting “transparency”, yet deliver obfuscation. As in all human endeavor, people gravitate toward those who will celebrate their every deed , yet the human animal is not blessed perfection of thought or deed. Government and business who shy from being open with “old media” and dismissive of “new media” foster nothing but suspicion, clouded by being shunned or mitigated by superfluous rules designed to exclude public discourse or criticism, good and bad. Such demeanor and conduct is is destined to failure.
Rather than taking a page from mainstream media, government must take a course analagous to its charge of its elected officials, that is, to serve the public by way of all media that engage its citizenry and interested parties. To do less is a travesty to The People of any given community left standing within a landscape where they are dumbed down by the lack of input of hyper local information to which they are not made privy through any source other than the blogosphere and the bloggers who make it pertinent.
It was and still remains the “new media” who have placed focus on elected officials, their conduct, their acumen, their accomplishments or lack thereof. Who else other than the blogger have opened the blinds to reveal economic development projects lacking integrity by a developer or the lack of protection by elected officials who must earn investment for growth for the public while imposing legal protection, return on investment to the community, and imprint a vision worthy of the input and time invested. Who but the blogger grew the knowledge base beyond the esoteric circles of a few parents to the greater community of parents who cannot attend meetings held by boards of education that conflict with their personal schedules?
As mainstream media grapples with balancing “news” and the “advertising dollar”, the lone blogger is engaged in his/her craft out of concern for a community left standing alone and abandoned by mainstream media. John Q. Public and Joan Q. Public are engaged in mainstream media. The blogosphere is ancillary in their need and concern to learn more about their community. The Wall Streeet Journal and the Financial Times offer in depth financial perspectives. The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and the Journal News, a macroscopic view. The missing perspective is the hyperlocal focus of New Rochelle’s Talk of the Sound, the Yonkers Tribune , the Westchester Herald, the White Plains CitizeNetReporter, the Larchmont Gazette, among others.
The paternalistic or maternalistic concept of “Daddy” or “Mommy” knowing best, true for most when in their formative years, is anathema to an adult public secure in knowing there is a broader picture to which they want and demand entrance unavailable but for the effort of bloggers.
With that in mind, the editor and publisher of the Yonkers Tribune , the Westchester Herald, and WVOX-1460 AM co-host of the radio talk show On the Level, herein places himself on the record in beseeching respective government to reassess their policy of exclusion be replaced with inclusion.
