Maria Stuart
It wasn’t until state Rep. Lisa Brown, D-West Bloomfield, was punished for using the word vagina during testimony in the Michigan Legislature that most of the state’s traditional media took notice of what’s been called the “chubby hubby of anti-abortion” bills.
We should all bow down and give thanks to vagina. Hopefully, you’re going to be reading and hearing a lot more about this anti-abortion legislation because of that one word.
Hear it roar, eh?
No matter what you think about Rep. Lisa Brown using the word, she deserves our thanks for shining a light on this legislation because up until she said vagina, most newspapers weren’t paying much attention.
That Michigan could turn itself into the most-restrictive state in the nation for women’s reproductive rights — seemingly in the blink of an eye — is huge news, right? No matter whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life — the fast-tracked legislation steaming its way through Lansing is something about which you’d probably like to (and really should) know more about.
That only one outlet, MLive, a digital/print company, produced any kind of continuous pre-vagina coverage of the state Legislature’s anti-abortion bills speaks volumes about the state of Michigan’s newspaper industry.
What’s impressive here is that MLive doesn’t even have a Lansing newspaper, but it apparently values highly reporting on what our lawmakers are doing.
Outside of a story in the Detroit News and a letter in the Detroit Free Press, I found little to no coverage about the legislation pre-Lisa Brown and the vagina heard ‘round the world.
If I missed all the coverage — and if I did, I apologize, and you can email me to let me know what I missed — I couldn’t find any pre-vagina opining on Michigan editorial pages.
Wha-at?
Pre-vagina, no Michigan newspaper had an opinion on this pack of bills?
As head-scratching as that is, the Lansing State Journal, just a stone’s throw (actually, six blocks or so) from the Michigan State Capitol, sent a photographer — but not a reporter — to cover a protest against the bills on Tuesday, June 12, choosing instead to use the story produced by the Associated Press. The one story it ran before the protest was from the AP, too.
That’s right, folks. The Lansing State Journal, situated just a reporter’s throw from the building in which Michigan law is made, ceded its Lansing coverage to the Associated Press, and it got its pre-vagina butt kicked by MLive, which doesn’t have a Lansing paper.
These are strange days in the news-gathering business.
Now comes news via the Poynter Institute that layoffs are likely at the Detroit Free Press, the beloved newspaper of my youth.
Illustrating so well the result of huge cuts in so many newsrooms, Michigan’s print publications are regularly whipped by digital reporting, bloggers and social media. Pre-vagina, there have been pieces posted on the anti-abortion legislation by pro-life websites and pro-choice websites — all the usual suspects — and the legislation received a lot of coverage on more mainstream websites, too.
But digital-only media sometimes appeal to specific slivers of the online readership pie. I maintain that there is still a place for more traditional news-gathering entities, but objectivity, depth and quality don’t come without investment.
Poor or non-existent political coverage serves no one well, except those who benefit from operating in the dark. Do you think the rise of crazy politics and the crash of newspapers might be linked? There’s a really interesting piece on Salon.com about how the decline of newspapers corresponds to the polarization of our political process.
Newspapers have been integral to our democratic way of life. Their decline is a cautionary-tale, chicken-and-egg thing: Which came first: sacrificing quality, pages, reporters and in-depth work for ever-larger profits; or the print world’s inability to figure out a way to cope with digital?
The rise of digital is inevitable — fast, cheap, it’s available anywhere there’s an Internet connection; however, some — me included — think there’s still a place for newspapers.
But how some of our state’s once-glorious newspapers covered this “chubby hubby” package of anti-abortion bills before the word vagina was uttered on the House floor doesn’t make me feel hopeful.
