Pulse Rising

BLOGS MAKING THEIR MARK ON LOCAL POLITICS

FITSNews - July 25, 2008 - Believe it or not, on the front page of today’s La Socialista is a story about ordinary South Carolinians “finding their happy place.” The article - which truly is emblematic of the feel-good crap that fills the newspaper’s agenda-driven, politically-correct pages everyday - explores the less-than-gripping sagas of several less-than-newsworthy South Carolinians doing eminently less-than-interesting things.

From the story:

Dino Pournaras breezily walked into Immaculate Consumption, a cafe at Main and Pendleton streets. The pep in his step was magnetic, especially since he was wearing a suit on another stifling 90-degree day.

Pournaras, 29, a law clerk for the Richland County Public Defender’s Office, seems like a person averse to stress.

“Once I realize there’s nothing I can do about it, I just get carefree,” he said.

Funny … it turns out our founding editor Sic Willie is also “getting carefree” this morning. In fact, he “breezily Samba-stepped” (an ambulative tribute to his Rio de Janeiro roots) into a downtown coffee shop a few hours ago wearing an O’Neill surf shirt and black Dockers swim trunks. He may have even whistled Dixie as he did so.

Of course, our point here is that apart from Sic’s teeming mass of imaginary female adorers, no one really cares what he’s wearing or where he took his coffee this morning. And the fact that the biggest newspaper in South Carolina wasted several kabillion column inches covering the utterly irrelevant banalities of people far less interesting than Sic (as opposed to covering real news) signifies a growing “substantive truth void” in the mainstream media - a void being filled on a daily basis by alternative papers like the Free Times and blogs like The Pulse of Columbia.

“The State newspaper in recent years - particularly in the last year or two - has not given the level of attention to reporting local news that the citizens of Columbia deserve,” said Patton Adams, former Mayor of Columbia. “There are a number of excellent reporters on the staff but there is very little depth in reporting and very little follow-up on stories of major importance.”

For example, the City of Columbia’s finances are currently in deep despair due to administrative waste and recklessness, including massive shortfalls due to the overpayment of insurance premiums.

La Socialista briefly touched on this $18 million overpayment (which has incidentally threatened vital public safety needs in the city), but only after it was first exposed by The Pulse.

Ironically, the newspaper turned around and expended a lot more ink in going after The Pulse itself, publishing an article earlier this month that revealed the identity of the website’s authors. This is particularly hypocritical considering the fact that the paper has protected the anonymity of liberal bloggers in the past.

“People attack us for launching volleys but not offering solutions,” says Dave Wilson, editor of The Pulse. “Well, it’s not our job to come up with solutions, it’s our job to report the fact that the people whose job it is to come up with solutions aren’t doing it.”

Wilson says he’s surprised by The State newspaper’s attacks, which included a column just last week saying that The Pulse “ridicules and takes pot shots” at city officials.

“Ink must be pretty cheap if they’re spending so much of it coming after us,” Wilson said.

Despite La Socialista ’s double standard and its repeated attacks on local conservative blogs, the effort to marginalize its new competition doesn’t seem to be working.

For his part, Adams says that more and more elected officials and opinion makers are turning to alternative news sources like The Pulse to “find out what’s really going on.”

“I think the lack of reporting by The State on important issues has caused people like myself and others to go to websites and blog sites to find out what is really happening in the city,” Adams said.

Mark Lett, executive editor of The State , was not immediately available for comment.

Comments

By John on July 25th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

the State suxs.

By Trey on July 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

That article really is a pathetic piece of journalism. I think the standard of journalism and journalists at The State has little to do with their failings, there’s an online revolution going on across the state that has more to do with cost and sensationalism than anything else. Only the Post and Courier is gaining subscribers in this state.