Newspaper didn’t report Obama victory
A newspaper based out of an Oklahoma town neglected to report the results of the recent presidential election. And some readers are none too happy about that. The Sapulpa Daily Herald decided not to cover the election, opting instead to mention a quick blurb about most of the county voting for McCain.
But no word about Barack Obama being president-elect.
Residents were upset about the omission, noting that national news was as important to them as local news. And I bet with an election this historic, one would expect even a small newspaper to mention something.
The newspaper insisted that their main focus is being a local paper, and with a circulation of just 5,000, they don’t expect readers to turn to them for big news. Since it’s an afternoon paper, they figured most people would already have the news anyway.
Wow. Some people are citing racism, insisting that the paper would have printed something had McCain won. And they wanted an important national event covered. Here’s our question – did they cover previous presidential elections?
2 Comments
A similar thing happened at the Terrell Tribune here in Texas. They did run some wire stories inside but they were written from the standpoint that the reader already knew Obama was president.
If you were relying on the paper to give you that information, you wouldn’t have gotten it. It speaks to a lot of things.
For one thing, newspapers (particularly at the local level) have already begun assuming you picked up any national news elsewhere. They’re usually right. What some of them aren’t picking up on is the collectible value of newspapers. For remembering historic events like this, people still want the hard copy.
Most newspapers, particularly the small local ones, are in the midst of an identity crisis. And I speak from experience, sometimes there is extreme tunnel vision for local events. I couldn’t even get most people at my last newspaper interested in covering events at the county level, let alone anything national. Some of those pressures come from small staffs and shrinking budgets, but readers expect to see certain things when they open a “newspaper.” There’s my rant for the day, I feel refreshed.
I know where I’m from, the paper is so small they just report local stuff. But the county is small, so they do include county stuff. I don’t remember if they ever reported presidential elections.
It seems like a no-brainer at first, and then when I thought about it, most of the people where I’m from tended to get state and national news from the bigger metro paper.