The closest big daily paper is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It is a major metropolitan newspaper with national and state news as well as news from the Atlanta area. (Fannin County is not part of the Atlanta area—thank God!)
I do not subscribe to the Journal-Constitution nor read it for a couple of reasons. First, the news from Atlanta is confusing to me. Metro Atlanta covers nine counties, and each of them has its own government and sheriff’s department. Within those nine counties are a number of separate cities, and each of them has its own government and police department. I never lived in Atlanta so I have no idea where these counties and cities are in relation to each other. When a news report refers to some place in Metro Atlanta I’m clueless of where it is. To me, Atlanta is the place two hours south of me where the traffic sucks.
But more than that, the news from Atlanta is boring. It’s always the same: road construction, traffic delays, murder, mayhem, government incompetence and waste and the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Falcons. I don’t care about anything of those things as long as they stay in Atlanta and away from here. I feel that way about a lot of things.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press is the only other metropolitan newspaper that has a presence here. I’ve seen a couple Times Free Press mailbox receptacles around here so I guess some people subscribe to it. Chattanooga is located just under two hours northeast of Fannin County in another state. The news of Chattanooga is even less relevant to me than the news from Atlanta. I doubt whether 99.9 percent of the news from Chattanooga is relevant to anyone anywhere, even to people in Chattanooga. The only two meaningful events in Chattanooga in the last 150 years are the terror attack on a recruiting station last year and the Battle of Lookout Mountain in the Civil War. Chances are that it will be another 150 years before something meaningful happens there.
For local news in Fannin County you have to rely on the three local weekly newspapers and word of mouth.
The fact that Fannin County has three weekly newspapers is rather amazing considering that Fannin County has less than 25,000 residents. You would think that with three newspapers Fannin County residents would be well informed about the doings of their local officials. If they’re relying on the newspapers for their news that’s probably not the case.
There’s only one newspaper that does any real investigative journalism or is willing to publish articles that are genuinely critical of the local establishment. That’s the Fannin Focus. Unfortunately, the Focus is small and doesn’t have the resources to cover all the stories that need to be covered.
The oldest and most well established paper, The News Observer, has the broadest coverage of local news of any of the local papers. But a lot of that “news” is stuff like little Johnny wins the sixth grade spelling bee and Elmer Johnson received his Ace Mechanic Award. It might be interesting if you know little Johnny and Elmer Johnson but it’s not exactly the type of information you need to know to decide whether your local government and judiciary are doing a good job for you.
The News Observer does cover local government…in a fashion. Unfortunately it’s the newspaper of the Fannin County establishment, and it goes out of its way to minimize or overlook the peccadillos and mistakes of local officials. It certainly avoids criticizing them, and in at least a couple of instances it actually covers up for them. I believe one of the reasons for that is because it has been designated by local officials as the official legal organ of the county. That means that all legal advertisements and notices must be published in the News Observer. I suspect the News Observer treats local officials with kid gloves because it doesn’t want to lose that lucrative source of revenue.
The third paper, the Fannin Sentinel, also is limited and rather bland in its coverage of local officials. Its reports are factual but there is no investigative journalism or critical commentary when local officials screw up.
If you only read the News Observer and the Fannin Sentinel you might confuse Fannin County with Mayberry.
So the bottom line is that I don’t think reading the local papers is enough to keep fully informed of what is really happening in Fannin County. That being said, this is a small community. It seems like ninety percent of the people in Fannin County are related to each other in some way or went to school with each other. Everyone knows someone who knows something. Word gets around quickly in Fannin County. It’s like there’s a bush telegraph that communicates all the local rumors, scuttlebutt, gossip and dirty laundry faster than a 24 hour news network.
It amazes me when I talk to everyday people in Fannin County how much they know or intuit about local officials, government and local affairs. Many posts ago I commented that one problem with living in a small community is that if you act like an asshole it doesn’t take long for everyone to think you’re an asshole even if you’ve never met the person. That’s the Fannin County bush telegraph in operation.
My hypothesis is that in a small community like Fannin County word of mouth is at least as effective (and perhaps more so) in communicating information about local affairs as newspapers and local television news are in more populous areas. Studies show that most people are not really well informed and usually base their opinions and political choices on incomplete and sketchy information. In that regard, I suspect that thanks to the bush telegraph people in Fannin County have access to just as much incomplete and sketchy information as people elsewhere.
I guess that means that people in Fannin County know as little about local public affairs as people elsewhere. The good news is that we probably don’t know any less. In other words, we’re no more ignorant than the rest of the country. I think that’s a good thing but I’m not sure.
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