I hate to continue to critique my former industry (and former colleagues) ... but its stuff like this that really gets my blood boiling.When I worked in television news, we always joked about the existence of a "south of 480" bias.
In other words, news crews only traveled into Summit County and beyond for stories related to crime, death and destruction.
For some reason, reporters would gladly drive to Put-In-Bay or Ashtabula to cover a story, but hated driving to Akron ... even though Akron is closer than either of those other locations (making for an easier day.)
You see, here's a dirty little secret of tv news. "Smart" stations cover stories where the ratings boxes are located.
I seem to remember one year, when there was a sudden spike in the number of Nielsen families in Richland County.
Well, you know what that meant ... suddenly Mansfield became a much more important area to cover.
Why do they do this? Well, the higher the ratings the more you can charge for ads.
Well, when the full-fledged advent of delivering news online through websites arrived, I for one was glad.
This was surely something that would break down regional barriers, right?
I mean, while you want Nielsen families to tune in to your broadcasts, you want everyone to use your website.
Sadly, that still isn't happening.
A check of my former employer's website finds the following stories as the top news items south of I-480.
An July 4th attack that might be a hate crime. Gunshot victim in Barberton. Texas dog found roaming the streets of Brunswick (debatable whether this should be an "Akron-Canton" story). Man found hanging in Stow playground. Canton shooting victim mourned. 1200 arrests in "Operation Falcon." 7th child enticement in Stow.
Whew. It seems like the "south of 480" area is a horrible place to live.
Now, these stories SHOULD be here, don't get me wrong. People want to know when bad things happen in their neighborhoods.
But, they also want to know the GOOD things that happen there as well.
Looking at my former employer's news for the area north of 480 ... you see stories on free health care, Cuyahoga County reform, a setback for a Chagrin Valley church, a dentist paying patients to come to their appointments, a new ethics policy for Cleveland city workers, and local businesses using social networking for marketing.
To top it off, that section features "previews" of 4 weekend events: the unveiling of the rebuilt Superman house in Cleveland, the city's Ingenuityfest, a church rummage sale, and the Cain Park Arts Festival.
Notice the difference?
The "south of 480" area of the website is filled solely with crime. The north of 480 is almost devoid of crime.
Why? Well crime is easy to cover. Easy to pull out of newspapers. Easy to get via press releases. Easy to acquire through beat calls. Easy to show a "presence" in the Akron-Canton area, even though that "presence" is entirely bad news.
And the weekend previews really, really get to me.
You see, this weekend, downtown Akron happened to host an Italian-American Festival. It was the 62nd year for this event, but its first since moving downtown. There were 70 vendors, 2 music stages, games, great food, and much more.
I was in attendance last night ... and on Friday night alone, THOUSANDS of people packed into the downtown area to experience the fun. Akron was alive. It was a wonderful event.
So here's a question. If the station/website listed above can take so much time to write weekend previews of great events in Cuyahoga County, why not take 10 more minutes and post a few words about a great event in Summit County? An event that likely will draw crowds larger than that rummage sale, and equal to the other events.
My theory ... it's because very few of the website contributors live in Summit County. They write about the events they go to, and not about the ones they pass on. Which is fascinating to me.
I once sat in a morning meeting, where a corporate news guru pointed out that the meeting participants were very homogenized.
All were white, many were single, there weren't a lot of men, and there weren't a lot of parents in the room.
He concluded that our story selection might be biased, because we were determining our coverage based on what we were interested in, but not necessarily what the general public thought was important.
It was a fascinating lesson.
Well guess what, these stations have cured that problem, but now suffer from a regional bias.
There aren't a lot of people who live south of 480 who can make their voices heard. Even if it's for something simple, like writing a preview of an Italian-American Festival.
So, as a consumer who lives south of 480, and likes living south of 480, I urge you to keep supporting you local newspapers, radio stations and their websites. Places like akronnewsnow.com, ohio.com, and cantonrep.com.
Otherwise a news void could turn into a news vacuum for those of us living in the undiscovered country.
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