Yesterday I mentioned a rather sorry piece of political theater orchestrated by John Thornton's Texas Tribune who seem to be struggling in finding a balance between reporting their news-ish stories in a somber manner and catering to Evan Smith's carnival barker tendencies. In this case, the carnival-barker won and, despite few Texans even realizing what was happening, the very serious matter of immigration reform was reduced to a juvenile back-n-forth between two of Texas' most diminutive political figures.
While some of the TLSPM chose to take the matter (somewhat) seriously Houston's hometown newspaper hid it's news treatment of the event behind it's pay-wall while releasing a juvenile slide-show on it's free site.
Unsurprisingly, most of the "straight" coverage focuses heavily on Mr. Castro, who is a TLSPM darling despite little-evidence to show he's the 'rising-star' they are painting him to be.
For Chron.com however the increasing prevalence of hokey-juvenile content is troubling, as it undercuts the contentions of the new Editor-in-Chief Nancy Barnes that she's planning on steering the USS Chronicle back onto solid journalistic footing. It also doesn't speak well for new Managing Editor Vernon Loeb, who has spent more time retweeting leftist causes and activist groups on his Twitter feed than he apparently has working on the reporting.
None of this bodes well for the future of political journalism in Houston. Nor does it reflect well on the information delivered to citizens of the entire Metro region. If the Chronicle is continuing to abdicate it's throne as the newspaper of record, then there's precious little reason to pay any attention to them at all except on Sunday, for ads and coupons.
I know, from personal experience, that there are still some good front-line journalists over at the Chronicle but they're being given a background role to the on-line, pretty slide-show team. No matter which way you look at it, this is a bad development. It's already bad enough that the Texas Tribune is pushing much of the agenda for the TLSPM, although one could argue that it's just the name on the masthead that's changed.
Back during the Bush Governorship, it was Paul Burka writing columns and articles that gave the TLSPM their marching orders. Today the "Dean of Texas Political Journalism" is out of touch and out of ideas. He (and Wayne Slater for that matter) have been reduced to fitting their personal obsessions (For Burka it's Perry, for Slater it's Rove) into almost every issue whether it fits or not.
Bad, grandstanding politicians have always, and will always, be with us. What has changed dramatically over time is the way the media handles them. Before their antics were reported on and treated in an adult manner. Eventually the demagogues slipped up and were outed as idiots. Today's media, especially the TLSPM, chooses to view some of them as icons, while trying to portray the one's whose ideas they don't like as firmly in the mainstream of the party with which they disagree.
This is horrible political journalism, but it's what we're reduced to in Texas today.
