How Do Californians Get Their News About the State?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

This is not a rhetorical question, and it is an important one for an informed voting population and civic engagement in our state.

Sacramento Bee columnist Steve Wiegand, expressed his astonishment of the lack of Californian's knowledge of state issues, the budget and finances in particular in a column, "C'mon, We Can Be All That Dumb."

The layoffs and consolidations at most of California's major newspapers and a trend started in motion even before the advent of the internet is having its toll and may only worsen as we learn daily of the disappearance of veteran journalists. Today I learned from A.G. Block that not only has the Capitol Bureau Chief of the San Francisco Chronicle leaving the paper, but that Mark Sandalow, their Washington, D.C. bureau chief is leaving. Block was the editor of the California Journal, a monthly publication with a treasure trove of information and insight into state issues that stopped publishing in 2005.

The Los Angeles Times has lost Jennifer Warren, who covered the policy decisions made in Sacramento on the state's prison system and was steeped in the details of that important area. You can read more about the changes at the Times in one of their own articles or one we have written.

To some, these may be only statistics, but when you study many of the individuals being laid off or forced to take buyouts, there is a parallel with term limits--we are losing those with knowledge of the history of state government and our Capitol. We should remember Orwell's admonition in his novel 1984: "Those who control the past, control the future; Those who control the future, control the present; Those who control the present, control the past."

In California, a state of 36,000,000 souls, largest in the United States, larger than Canada and 194 of the world's 221 countries, there were only 39 different articles in the dozens of newspapers scoured by Rough & Tumble today. We found a total of 19 opinion pieces at least tangentially related to state policies in this morning's 15 papers we read.