an overwhelming show of apathy
tommyElection day is less than three weeks away. Do you know who you are voting for in your local races? Do you even know who is running?
In Creative Loafing, Wayne Garcia laments the sorry state of local politics, quickly hitting the overall attitude for everyone involved. In a nutshell:
- Incumbents ignore debates and interview requests.
- Mainstream media “doesn’t give a shit.”
- Opinion leaders don’t seem to care.
- Just over 20% of local voters showed at the primaries.
Yeah – the President, Congressmen, and Governors make important decisions that affect millions and millions of people. But as we tried to explain back in May, your county commissioners have a much greater impact on your every day life. You should know what’s going on. You should know what these people can do. You should know who wants to be in that club. But you can’t find out from your local newspapers.
Check out the Tribune’s coverage of the County Commission races. From their main politics page, you can choose which district you want to learn more about. For district one, they have one web page with basic information on Rose Ferlita and Mary Mulhern, with links to profiles of each. Under “Complete Coverage,” TBO points to just one single story written about the district, which is only a September piece about BOCC primary wins. (It’s the same single story described as “Complete Coverage” for all the BOCC races – Districts 3, 4, 5, & 7.)
Shit – For district five, TBO misspells Joe Redner’s name!!! Try “Joe Reder” in the google cache in case they fix it after this post.
The St. Pete Times less than that. From the main TampaBay politics page I found absolutely nothing in regards to Hillsborough or Pinellas County Commission races.
Do newspapers fail to write about this stuff because people don’t care? Or do people not care because newspapers fail to write about it?
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October 19th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
You know, lemme continue to lash out at local media coverage.
Media General publishes a free newspaper that ends up on most people’s driveways on friday and Tuesday nights. These papers are deemed to be more local than the daily North Pinellas Times and yet nothing has been noted in these papers about elections (at least not in The Suncoast News — my local edition). BOCC in Pinellas? State Legislature? Please… “That’s what the Tribune is for.”
Catch-22.
There are other local newspapers that many of us receive in the mail or can pull out of a newspaper rack. These papers have a bad deadline because most of them are monthly but again — they are local and fail to even acknowledge there is an election going on.
This is sort of a niche that bloggers have a chance to make up… But then again? Not all readers of the Trib, the Times and other newspapers make it online in the first place. And if they do, they don’t generally know what a blog is or how to look up information
October 20th, 2006 at 10:14 am
The lack of interest in local politics has very little to do with media coverage. It’s a cultural obstacle, one that certainly has no easy answer.
If a majority of people cared, the papers would print information because it would sell. Newspapers are not cheap to run - the shrinking trend made apparent in the Times redesign wasn’t just for easier handling.
It still would be nice to see TBO and the Times create more online-only content. But then again whether it be online or in print, the information will only be found by those that want to find it. And now we’re back to culture.
I still think BayNews9 is the most essential mainstream source of local news, political or otherwise. Shame it’s only available for Bright Houses.
October 22nd, 2006 at 8:47 am
It’s because everybody here is from somewhere else. THEY are the ones who don’t care. I get so tired of hearing about how apathetic WE voters are here in Tampa. It’s us homegrown folks who do all the voting. We just can’t win against new money and purchased power. And no grass-roots, Kennedy-esque lectures, please. Politics in Tampa have been a joke for eons, all the way back to selling commission votes. Or are we still doing that?
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:11 pm
16 comments about Ann Coulter, who’s never held political power in her life.
3 comments about local political apathy.
There’s some sort of bizarre disconnect here.
Part of why I’m apathetic is because I hate my choices this year. I liked Rod Smith, but Davis won, so I’m not excited about the guv race. I don’t think Kathy Castor, or anyone else on the HBoCC, deserves promotion, so I’m not excited about the Congress race. Are we really supposed to be interested when the at-large commission race is between the awful Jim Norman and the ridiculous Joe Redner? I voted for Redner just to make a point, but it’s not like I’d campaign for the guy. In a year like this it’s just hard to be very interested. I figured out long ago that I wasn’t happy with any of my choices. Filling out the ballot was enough work without being expected to care. And yes, I’m writing this while deployed overseas, theoretically defending the very right I’m being cynical about here. How’s that for you?
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
[...] Tribune questions commission candidatesAfter bitching about the lack of information in local political races in the newspaper, the tribune did link a Q&A piece written last week to their politics page. Questions were asked of each commission candidate, and the answers were printed in the Tribune last Wednesday. But there were no answers from Jim Norman. He failed to respond to the Tribune’s request. [...]