Politics-blog shake-up at Watertown Daily Times
During the election, Jude Seymour’s “All Politics Is Local” blog became a mainstay for anyone wanting to stay up to speed on the NY-23 House race or the Aubertine-Ritchie state Senate contest.
Now Seymour has moved on to TV and will be reporting and editing for Channel 7. WDT managing editor Bob Gorman says the paper’s political blog will be reinvented a bit with a new focus on goings-on in Albany.
Right now, the blog is taking a short hiatus, with emphasis on the word “short.” In January you will be seeing a revamped blog that will feature the work of Times staffer Brian Amaral, whose research and writing talents are first class.
With Brian at the helm of this blog, we can now go on a bit of a different tack, one that features more reporting from Albany, where major decisions involving reapportionment will affect our region for the next decade.
Meanwhile, veteran Times staffer Marc Heller will continue to provide news from Washington, D.C., that is important to you as well.
With Heller and Amaral, we will be giving you a one-two political punch you can’t find anywhere else in the north country.
That’s disappointing. There are already countless blogs on national politics and several good ones focusing on state politics (Capitol Confidential, The Daily Politics, Politics on the Hudson). I guess this leaves the In Box as the only good blog about north country politics.
I have to add, this is a huge reason why newspapers are floundering. They are all offering the same generic coverage of state and national political punditry as everyone else. Instead of being one of 5 million places who does the same thing except not as well as some of the others, be one of a few sites everyone goes to to get local and regional news. I think the In Box has more national stuff than I’d like but ultimately, its real focus is local and that’s why it does so well. Local news outlets must focus on what makes them unique if they want to survive instead of spending a lot of their resources on half-a***d wire service crap or two-bit national punditry like everyone else. I believe this very strongly.