CON GAMES: All’s FAIR In Dearth Of Reporting

March 10th, 2008 at 07:11pm Michael Conniff 2

I have known the idea of independent investigative reporting powered by a non-profit in Aspen has been percolating for at least six months, and I’ve known about it from the start. Even so, I’m more than a little bit floored that Factual Aspen Investigative Reporting (heretofore FAIR) has been formed by three citizens of variegated political views: Tim Semrau, Roger Marolt, and Bill Dinsmoor.

Semrau was unfairly pigeonholed as the Donald Trump of Aspen in his losing Mayoral bid; Marolt is from one of the first families of Aspen and a local newspaper columnist; and Dinsmoor, active in the business community, is the proprietor of the popular Main Street Bakery. As trios go, these three can find all kinds of things to disagree about politically, but when it comes to Aspen the FAIR principals are certain the local newspapers are no longer fulfilling a basic function in the community.

When the formation of FAIR became public this week, the announcement was couched in a way to make it seem that a “for-profit” entity like a local newspaper simply can’t afford to do investigative reporting. True enough—though you probably would be shocked to learn one of the local papers hired an “investigative reporter” less than a year ago, and then told said scribe he would have to produce the same daily fodder as everybody else.

The result: no investigative reporting.

Newspapers are giving up this particular ghost because it’s automatically expensive and inherently problematical. Look at it from their perspective: you spend all this time and money to do a difficult story, and then many members of the community excoriate you for simply doing your job. Investigative reporting just doesn’t pay, and that’s why we’re going to see more of the kind of alternative funding that FAIR represents.

So it’s unfair to fault the locals for not putting together “Spotlight” teams and the like. Local papers who do make that commitment are few and far between. My beef has far more to do with the relationship of local Aspen papers to the people in power. I think it’s fair to say that both papers endorse the basic no-growth policies of the Aspen City Council, and embrace these policies as their own. The upshot, if you’re keeping score at home, is that the local papers accept the powers-that-be almost without question.

Affordable housing is good and should not be scrutinized. Development is bad and should be stopped. A massive Pitkin County office building downtown costing at least $50 million is not even noticed by the local press, and the affordable housing fund, now all but empty, passes muster because it provides shelter regardless of the ultimate cost. One final nail in the coffin: the ongoing coverage of the untouchable Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis is nothing less than a daily journalistic disgrace.

I give you, in contrast, the fictional world of “The Wire,” the great HBO show about Baltimore that just aired its final show. The 2008 edition featured The Baltimore Sun during a time of travails and layoffs, but I was nonetheless struck by the determination of the reporters and editors to hold city officials to account. I never worked for The Sun, though my first job in journalism was at the late and not-so-great Baltimore News American. But I can tell you this: the determination of those big-city newspapermen in the real world to get the powers-that-be to answer for what they do was something I also saw firsthand in newspapers in San Francisco and Boston. That kind of attitude was nothing less than their reason for being.

The hours are bad and the pay stinks—so why else would anyone want to do such a difficult job?

And that’s what’s missing in Aspen: a sense of mission. The Fourth Estate really functions now as an extension of elected officials, with a dearth of skepticism where a dollop is long overdue. It’s no exaggeration to state the obvious: the newspapers are the establishment in a town where politics lists to the left.

FAIR has a fair shot at changing things in Aspen. With luck, the reporting funded by the nonprofit will light a fire under the local papers. At worst, things can only get better.

Entry Filed under: Politics, Media, Aspen, Colorado, Con Games, People, Pitkin County, Sheriff Race 2006, Race For Mayor 2007, Aspen City Council