congratulations and thank you for being one of the few non-partisan voices left in Atlanta and in the country for that matter. As much as I think that the new media of blogs, website, etc has great value, I believe that is truly contributes to the dumbing down of our society. It is increasingly difficult to the average citizen to discern between opinions and facts. even most of the big media outlet have, at best surrendered to drama instead of reporting and at it worst have become an outlet for partisan politics.

Change is good when change means progress. I am not it is the case in news reporting.

Again thank you for still following the core precepts of journalism!

I am participating in the Citizen’s Government Academy in Marietta which exposes the participants to different areas of city government. One of the main issues discussed last evening was how best for city government to communicate with the city’s citizens. The city puts out an excellent e-mail newsletter each week that lets people know what’s going on with city council meetings, commission and committee meetings, and special events sponsored by the city or by civic organizations. They have a wealth of material related to city business that is available online. However, they lamented the decline of local news coverage by the AJC and even the Marietta Daily Journal. The MDJ is relentlessly critical of nearly everything the city tries to do, but at least they used to cover the city beat more thoroughly than they do now. Even negative coverage is better than no coverage, I suppose. One of the CGA participants is the former Cobb Co. bureau chief for the AJC. I probably should be concerned about getting my news about the city largely from the city itself, but in the absence or weakness of other sources, I’m really not.

It also seems the reporting “specialists” seem to make a better go of it, and that is probably the future. Ie, someone (or a variety of people with different opinions) reports on the state legislature. Someone else reports on city hall and council. Someone else reports on a specific industry (real estate, technology, etc.) or a different business niche (start-ups) or a large company (Coca-cola). Specialists will provide the best, most timely, accurate, detailed, and therefore most valuable information. However, for the casual news gatherer, it sure would be nice if someone “aggregated” the news feeds from the specialists somewhere.

Thanks for your reporting.