When the mob ruled upstate…and newspapers cracked the case

The Utica-Observer dispatch has a great series on-line about the Utica-region’s mob history.

It reads one part like a William Kennedy novel, one part like The Godfather…from the Sicilian crime bosses to the the car-bombings and the crooked public officials.

It’s great reading and it’s also an opportunity to hammer again on this point:

A coalition of Utica journalists won a Pulitzer back in 1959 for courageously uncovering the city’s crooked network of bent cops and gangsters.

Who does that kind of civic journalism once newspapers are gone? Who will serve as the watchdogs on complicated issues like this?

If the police are crooked, the politicians are on the take, and your local newspaper went bankrupt years ago — where will you turn?