R could draw from the work of five Statehouse reporters in 2000. That was just before Copley sold a number of smaller newspapers to the Chicago Sun-Times’ parent company and reduced its Statehouse reporting staff to four. By the time GateHouse took over in 2007, only three Statehouse reporters remained under Copley’s service, a number further reduced the following year when Peoria closed its bureau. The Rockford Register Star joined GateHouse after a buyout from its previous owner, Gannett, in 2007. It closed its own Statehouse bureau the next year and now all three papers rely on the two remaining GateHouse reporters.
But GateHouse’s shrinking Statehouse press corps is just one example of a statewide trend, which mirrors a national trend. Since the exit of UPI, the remaining wire service the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune have each cut one Statehouse position, and Lee Enterprises, which owns the Decatur Herald and Review and the Bloomington Pantagraph, has cut two full-time Statehouse reporting positions, bringing the total number of such print positions lost in the last decade to 11. That leaves only 11 daily newspaper reporting positions still in the Capitol today, assuming the Daily Herald and SJ-R do indeed fill their recently vacated positions. Nationwide, the number of newspaper reporters covering state Capitol action full time dropped from 524 to 355, more than 30 percent, between 2003 and 2009, according to a survey by the American Journalism Review.
Charlie Wheeler, former Statehouse reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and now the director of a Statehouse reporting program at the University of Illinois Springfield, says the decline in the last 10 years is an extension of a gradual decline that’s taken place over the last several decades. Earlier bureau closings, however, were a result of newspapers going out of business entirely, he says. “That was not somebody deciding, we’re an ongoing operation, we just don’t care about Springfield anymore, which in the case of Rockford, that was their decision. And should Arlington Heights not fill this, that would be their decision too, that we don’t care enough about Springfield and state government to bother having a full-time presence.”
While Illinois’ papers that are now without Statehouse bureaus lament the loss and admit that coverage isn’t as complete as it once was, they say they’re still able to provide the necessary coverage. “Any kind of personnel decision of that nature is difficult, and I’m an old school editor and any time you have fewer reporters, I don’t care what the beat is … the coverage isn’t going to be as complete,” Peoria Journal-Star managing editor John Plevka says, adding that coverage by the Associated Press and home office reporters helps fill the void. “Dealing over the telephone may not always be as effective as those conversations face to face … but we see them here, they [lawmakers] come back to their home districts. We still stay in touch with those folks,” Plevka says.
Wheeler says covering an entity like the General Assembly from a distance means a reporter, and therefore the media outlet and its readers, viewers or listeners, will miss nuances and patterns that can make a big difference to a news story. “Why is it, for example, that newspapers rely on the Associated Press to let them know what’s going on in Russia? They could just as easily pick up the phone and call somebody in Russia and ask them what’s going on but they don’t do it because they realize that folks on the ground have the expertise, have the sources, have the context and are able to present a more credible, accurate picture than somebody trying to cover it from afar,” Wheeler says.
While traditional newspapers’ Statehouse ranks are dwindling, another type of news outlet could be on the rise. In Illinois, a nonprofit run by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity opened Illinois Statehouse News in December 2009, after recruiting Small Newspaper Group’s last
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