Small town newspaper wars

Lee Becker provided an interesting nugget in his coverage of a recent meeting of the Oconee County Commission. It seems the commission opted to advertise with The Oconee Leader for its next batch of citizen applications for committee appointments. The community has always advertised its public notices with The Oconee Enterprise in the past.

The Oconee Enterprise is the more established newspaper in the community, having served the area since 1884. The Oconee Leader, by contrast, is less than five years old.

Now, with all due respect to both journalistic institutions, it ain't like we're talking about The New York Times squaring off with The Washington Post. These are two small town papers that, while arguably well-connected to their local community, also lack in overall quality. That's more of a nature of the beast of small town papers and not necessarily a reflection of anything else, but it's important to keep in mind.

That said, The Oconee Enterprise is arguably more focused on providing local news coverage and analysis. Folks who get The Oconee Leader aren't looking to find out what happened at this week's commission meeting, but rather photos from festivals, fundraisers and the like. The only thing that even touches politics at the latter is the ridiculous rantings against socialism of Rob Peecher, and that's focused on national politics, not local politics.

And if Oconee County citizens wanted national coverage, they'd turn to a variety of other publications ... not a weekly start-up that intermingles national Republican politics with festival photos. And that's the primary reason that The Oconee Enterprise has remained the preferred choice in the community, though admittedly by default (and in contrast to The Oconee Leader's inflated circulation numbers which are so high because it's a free publication that is mailed out without solicitation).

As a result, it's completely foolish and short-sighted for the Oconee County Commission to begin advertising anything connected with local government with a publication that doesn't even cover the local government. Of course, as Lee noted in his post, what might be an underling driving factor is that The Oconee Enterprise has been a forceful critic of the local government's restructuring process and, in making its argument, regularly sensationalized one point of view over another. In addition, the newspaper regularly criticized those who adhered to the point of view not shared by its editorial staff.

Understandably, the affected commissioners should have been bothered by those developments, but switching where these notices are published shouldn't be motivated by policy disagreements.

As I said earlier, it makes little sense to switch advertisements that pertain to the local government to a publication that has no interest in actually covering the local government.