Something fishy going on in the mountains

Here's the kind of "unforced error" that has to make local newspaper publishers crazy: For a period of at least ten days, readers of the Swift chain of small community papers serving ski town in Colorado could not find ANY stories about Democratic candidates using the paper's online search functions. 

Bonus: readers COULD find Republican coverage using the same search engines. 

How could anyone not suspect some mischief being afoot? Particularly in these times?

No one seems to have any idea about what happened and the search function has evidently been restored... and only a handful of readers actually used the search function (there are many other ways for them to access their news), but this is a serious failure of trust.

It may be tough to recover that trust, which was already at a low level, if Colorado's ski towns are typical of other communities. After all, if the main local news source can't be trusted to accurately reflect its own coverage (those papers DID have stories on Dem candidates), then what else may be inaccurate?

I use this logic in urging students to spend more time on getting things right in their introductions (or "leads" in newswriting talk). If readers encounter a grammar error or a misspelled name or simple word, their willingness to trust the rest of the essay or article is immediately damaged. The easiest thing for a reader to do is stop reading, after all, and no one really WANTS to read much of anything.

We NEED to find out more, about whatever is on our minds. 

Newspapers and TV stations have a tendency to NOT cover themselves and no one looks forward to revealing weakness in procedures or people, particularly journalists who are trying to maintain at least a veneer of objectivity and openness. 

There have been many articles published recently about the death of local news, and there are even legislative initiatives to promote more local news outlets. Those efforts could use a bit more support, particularly avoiding this sort of story that muddies what happened and why. 

Do we really need more sloppy local news outlets? More slopping thinking in persuasive essays? More tolerance of easy-to-correct mistakes?