This is "Sunshine Week", a promotional effort by journalism organizations and others to promote more open government meetings and records. The irony this year is that it maight not make much difference. The drumroll of dead and dying papers continued in the past week, and newspapers are the prime originators or news in America. Will bloggers spend the enormous amount of time needed to go though those open records and attend those open meeting?
- 1,600 workers at McClatchy are out of work. (Read it at al.com.)
- Here's another blogger's list of ten papers most likely to go under in coming weeks. None is in Alabama. And an AP story about the potential for even more layoffs soon.
- Over the weekend, the announcement that a major newspaper/TV group is giving up on its Washington D.C. coverage. The Media General bureau will be shut down.
- And the annual State of The News Media is out today, and it paints a bleak but not hopeless portrait.
What all this means is that there will be even fewer eyes watching what the Feds are doing, at the same time the number of groups trying to influence what Congress and The White House do is increasing.
[*The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]
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