Why start: I just couldn’t sit back
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about why I’m working on ShakingNews, my project to cover and explain what’s happening in state politics (starting in New York).
The last few weeks have not been easy. Two people who had offered to work with me on various pieces of getting ShakingNews off the ground dropped out for personal reasons. The money that I expected to easily raise just didn’t come in. Feedback was sparse and staring at Google Analytics showed just a trickle of visitors to the site. Every day felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.
After conversations with my wife about our life plans, it got me thinking about what to do. Then, hearing Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz’s talk about why do a startup in Startup School, gave me a few second thoughts. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to invest my time in energy in something completely new, completely untested. Maybe I could travel around the world for a bit instead. Certainly, that would be more enjoyable.
But now is no time to give up.
With Donald Trump in the White House and Congressional Republicans threatening to repeal Obamacare, there’s plenty to be angry about. But those aren’t the only things going on in government, and issues in state and local government might actually have more of a direct impact on people’s lives, especially if the Obamacare repeal and other major legislation fails in the Senate.
Take the subway every day? It runs on 1930’s technology (or doesn’t run, as is unfortunately often the case) because state government doesn’t fund it. Commute into Penn Station? The problems there are directly related to government decisions.
Maybe you’re worried about affording rent? Well guess whose housing plans will have a big impact? Yep, state and local government. And if you end up priced out of your neighborhood because the “affordable housing” isn’t actually affordable? You’re right — it’s a result of policies enacted by our elected representatives.
Or what if you have kids? Don’t want to pay ridiculous amounts of money for them to go to preschool? New York City’s 3-K Preschool program could help, if the Mayor and Governor ultimately fund it. If you have older kids, it’s only efforts by local governments that keep them safe from drinking water contaminated with lead or suffering from lead poisoning. If they’re in college or off to college, they might not need to borrow thousands for student loans thanks to the Excelsior Scholarship.
All of this is driven by policies enacted at the local and state government levels. Unfortunately, while everyone is paying attention to the perfidy of Trump and Republicans in Congress, no one is watching the henhouse of state politics.
It’s not just a theoretical concern. At the same time as newspapers have shifted to more national coverage, studies have found a correlation with corruption.
They also find a similar relationship across states within the United States: the lower the news circulation, the greater the corruption.
Even figures like TV personality Maury Povich recognize this issue. After seeing the plight of Montana’s Flathead Valley where he vacations, he opened a newspaper, to counteract the dangers he saw without news coverage:
“What happens is, for instance, politically, local governments seem to have no checks, no balances. Too often, the population hears about something after the fact. When commissions aren’t covered, when council meetings aren’t covered, when zoning boards aren’t covered, the politicians are going to do what they feel like doing and they may be swayed by a business community that wants a particular variance.”
In New York in recent weeks, we’ve seen several politicians arrested and charged with various misdeeds. Because of the lack of news coverage, they thought they could take bribes or pay people under the table without exposure.
Recalling all of those problems, I’m reminded of precisely why I started ShakingNews.
The Founding Story
After helping the Clinton campaign with their digital outreach and text messaging program in the final days before the election, I was devastated at her defeat. I won’t pretend I didn’t cry a few times. In all honesty, there wasn’t much I did during the few subsequent weeks.
But when I got off the mat, I heard the conversation about fake news and realized it did not apply to most of the campaigns I worked on. Instead, the problem was no news (an issue I wrote about in a previous Medium post). There was virtually no one covering State Senate races or City Council elections. Even the big issues around those elections didn’t get talked about. Occasionally, a media outlet would write about a Congressional campaign or Mayoral race but the stories would rarely be substantive.
Friends would ask me about news stories they cared about, wanting to know more about what’s going on and why. I could tell them about the IDC and why Republicans control New York’s State Senate even though there were 32 Democrats compared to 31 Republicans. But only rarely could I point to a news outlet doing a good job of explaining an issue. (One notable exception: Streetsblog is a great source for biking and transportation-related news).
The success of Vox and 538 demonstrates that there’s an audience for context. People read Nate Silver or Ezra Klein because they know that every story has much more beyond the headlines. But if you want to understand more about state politics, there’s really nothing out there aimed at the average reader. Folks like Politico or policy journals like City Limits in New York or NJ Spotlight across the Hudson are great and they do tremendously useful journalism. But they aren’t written for the general public and don’t try to appeal to them.
Thinking back on all that led me to start ShakingNews, I realized: there’s no turning back. This is tremendously important work and someone needs to do it. And hearing from friends and readers how much they appreciated the ShakingNewsletter solidified that.
I don’t know what this will become but the feedback demonstrates people want this. Someone needs to do this and no one else is going to unless I take up the mantle.
Inspired?
So if you’re interested in being part of this journey, check out ShakingNews: http://ShakingNews.com/. Sign up for the ShakingNewsletter.
And if you want to do a little more to make ShakingNews a reality, drop me a line at michael@shakingnews.com. There’s a lot to do and it’s going to take all of his pulling together to reach our goal of covering and explaining state and local politics around the country.
