10th Amendment Up-Date

The nation’s founders built state capitals in remote areas, to avoid possible tyranny. But with fewer reporters aggressively covering state politics, Richard J. Tofel says corruption will increase precisely because government is so far away.

Those who care, click.

The numbers certainly support David Simon’s concerns: The American Journalism Review reported last year that the number of full-time reporters assigned to state capitals had dropped by one-third in six years, to an average of just seven reporters per state. With the business of the press having deteriorated further since the AJR survey, the numbers today are surely worse—and the continuing gridlock and irresponsibility gripping state governments from Sacramento to Albany are indicative of how problems can mushroom in the dark when scrutiny declines.

We can add that most great metropolitan television stations have closed whatever statehouse bureaus they had, though that trend started in the '80s. Not to imply anything positive about tee vee news coverage, of course.