The changing press corp who happen to work in Olympia

If we sent the Seattle Times $100,000, do you think they’d be able to bring David Postman back?

I’m not eager to link to him two days in a row, but Goldy is proposing raising $15,000 to send Josh Feit (who I have my own immature problems with) to Olympia to cover the legislature. I’d assume that people would chip in, maybe even the entire amount, because not only do they fear the effects on democracy of a shrinking press corp, they particularly like Feit’s politics.

Fitting that Goldy puts this out there on the same day that Andrew Garber from the legacy Seattle Times points out he doesn’t have that many people of the same profession to hang out with.

I think its fitting that now that we have a state budget database, that the governor can release her budget during a snow storm and get it out online and that TVW is more robust than ever, that the actual press corp is shrinking.

I do see a real role for honest brokers (along the lines of Fact Check), but the role’s of people like Josh Feit will be more and more imporant. Garber’s piece noted that former reporters, lobbyists and PR folks outnumber actual reporters in Olympia. That’s not exactly a bad thing, as long as some of them are keeping eyes on each other.

I envision organizations hiring more people like Feit to do thingly vieled partisan journalism. Instead of paid reporters standing between the sides, telling you what’s going on second hand, you’ll actually see hand to hand combat, sort of like the opinion page blew up all over the front living room. With searchable databases, of course.

Or, sort of like the good ol’days of Publius and Silence Dogood.