Yeah, my bad, right after I sent that it dawned on me that the few still left here probably are mostly locals… which reminds me of one my constant questions: why does the local press barely cover this story any longer, even on anniversary dates (the public may have a short attention-span, but the press shouldn’t!)… so many questions to keep asking CHPD and Durham DA office, even if they give unsatisfactory answers (or even moreso then!). Tom G., when he was around, seemed to be the only one doing much digging, and he was independent. Where are the investigative journalists? anyone here been in touch with any?
I have been in touch with a couple that I know, but they are spread so thin that they have not been able to focus on this particular story.
Journalism has been suffering mightily and is losing the battle. Few people are willing to pay for subscriptions to anything anymore, and newspaper advertising is all but dead. In our market, for print journalism, we basically have Gannett (which by the way, isn't even going to be carrying AP articles anymore!) and the Indy (and they are down to printing what? One issue a month? And they were acquired by The Assembly and are being asked to focus on long-form journalism, which means much less coverage of current/breaking news). Then there are a handful of local TV stations that are trying to cover multiple cities all at once.
Gannett is so desperate that they've started asking journalists to perform basic sales and marketing functions. Frankly, worse than not giving coverage to individual crimes, is the impact it's having on our democracy in that people can't even find information about basic local issues, like the public school budget snafu, without themselves doing investigative journalism (have you ever looked at the public records portal? Individuals are now filing open records requests about basic things that we should be able to read about in the newspaper). If you ask a question, you're directed to the city's public relations videos. There are all kinds of negative impacts to the lack of press coverage that go beyond people not knowing what's going on, because when there's a void, people with specific commercial or political interests will step in to fill it.
You used to be able to pick up a local paper and find out what's going on at city council meetings, school board meetings, city planning meetings, and even high school foot ball games -- long, detailed articles by people who worked a specific beat and had time to know the people, cultivate sources, and follow long enough to learn the ins and outs and to understand the debates and the context around them. Now, we get almost no coverage of city council, the school board (unless school is being disrupted by rolling sick-ins -- and even then, it's hard to figure out why it's happening without digging deep into primary sources) -- not because there are no great journalists, but because they are stretched so thin and forced to make do with so few resources.
Faith's murder has enough elements to make it into one of those widely-followed stories, but it usually starts with one journalist or team making it a pet project (like Gasparoli, whose reporting was not perfect IMO, but it served an important function) and beating the drum enough that national outlets start to take an interest. That's how the Murdaugh case went from a local news story to a national one -- but there is a huge element of randomness in which stories gain traction with media, and right now, we do not have a journalist champion for Faith.
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