Media Theory

You may not be able to tell, but I don't like where I live at. I would rather be some place else as I believe the area is severely lacking in so many ways that it would take months to describe them all. Hmmm that would be a great blog in itself. However I digress.
I try to read news and information from a number of places. My local newspaper is very lacking since it has no competition, and the competition it did have was itself. There is a competing newspaper but its circulation and content has issues as well. So as I was reading the LA Times on Tuesday I came across a business article by Tom Petruno. LA TIMES Article

After reading this article, not because I am interested in the "Carry Trade" or higher finance, but I was astounded that my newspaper has never carried an article like this. Luckily I know when the next Toastmasters is going to be. And you know how people are, not many share, and very few communicate reasonably. Maybe I need to go to Toastmasters, although I can do fine giving a speech. Maybe I can instill the need to communicate better.

So there is a need to communicate better. I started communicating with my wife, and she hates me even more now. I communicated with a couple of co-workers today about this. I asked them a few questions. First I asked if they lived in a small town. I asked if they read the newspaper in the small town (or outside the city limits, they didnt get the joke). I asked them if they felt informed via the newspaper in the small town or the big city. Then I sprang the link above on them. None of them had ever seen anything like that in any newspaper they frequent.

One person I asked was from Albuquerque. Short of the obituaries and sports, the newspaper was useless, except for maybe cushioning glassware in boxes as you move away. He was astounded that a much larger city might be getting better information, and developing to a different level based on the media that was frequented.

I spoke with another person that has lived in New York City, Portland and a few other large and small places. He too had not seen anything like this in a newspaper. He was curious though, that if the newspaper was targeted correctly. I agreed with him in that our local newspaper was lost. That the LA Times wasnt necessarily a godsend, but it did represent something more that a newspaper could be.

I spoke with another person that came from a much smaller town of around 50,000. She said that she felt more in touch with the community based on her local paper. She felt more informed by the big city paper. This made a certain sense to me. In a small town, the paper should pull residents together, in a social way.

I had begun to theorize though. I was feeling that certain markets are blessed by the media within them. They can afford better minds to develop stories, investigate and provide information that will propel the masses. There is much more to the whole theory, in that providing the community with a quality product helps the community greatly. If the community is short changed, it doesn't develop well at all. I look at Phoenix as an example. I ventured a guess that more than likely half the population is unreachable by the major news media. A combination of a language barrier, english comprehension and penetration. When such a significant portion of your population is ill informed, major problems arise. If there is not a steady flow of information to the residents, in cripples the city.

I look to college campuses as a great example of how everything is so well entwined. Although it might not be a fair example, the college writing does tie the reader to the local community. You see more informed people, more participation and an overall better feeling that is generated. As people understand the environment around them good things can happen.