I mentioned a while back, when Bill Nye visited Morris to speak to a sold-out crowd, that I’d be looking in our local weekly paper, the Morris Sun Tribune, to get a sense of the community response to the appearance of such a prominent advocate for science, who promotes evolution and the importance of responding to climate change.
I’ve been looking.
And looking.
It’s not quite what I expected.
The community reaction has been…total silence. No articles discussing the event, no letters to the editor saying yeah or nay, nothing. I searched for anything even mentioning Nye, and there was one article, sent by the UMM News Service, mentioning that tickets were available, and then, nada. The most famous popular science guy to ever pass through here, and it wasn’t notable enough to make the paper.
That’s very odd, I thought. We had another recent visitor, the Nobelist Peter Agre, who gave a public lecture on campus. Perhaps they noticed him? Nope. There’s a brief notice, again from the UMM News Service (they get a regular paragraph for campus happenings), and that’s it. There are the high school sports scores. The big news is that a Minnesota radio sports announcer is giving a talk on health.
I should have told Bill Nye ahead of time to talk more about foobawl. It’s the path to glory in the rural Midwest, I guess.
It’s a local paper … FOR LOCAL PEOPLE!
Or, as they say in Night Vale, “INTERLOPERS!”
What, not even a paragraph or two about local citizens sticking their fingers in their ears? No la, la la?
I’d say it’s either pragmatism or cowardice, depending on your POV. The editors of the MST undoubtedly know their subscribers tend to be very conservative and religious, so reporting on Nye would either involve acknowledging the Theory Of Evolution is real science and inviting a blizzard of angry letters and subscription cancellations, or denying the TOE and being the laughingstock at the next journalists’ convention.
It’s one thing to be liberal and pro-science in a small conservative community when your paycheck comes from a statewide institution. It’s another when it depends on the goodwill of all the Fox News viewers who still buy subscriptions and ads for their hardware stores.
I’m not saying I approve of this stance, but I can certainly sympathize with it.
Sounds as if you need to start a “Science and Reality” column in your local paper? :)
Anything other than politics, crime in the streets, or foobawl, you pretty much have to write the piece for them. You call it a ‘press release’ and tell them that they should feel free to use any or all of it.
There aren’t any science writers on local papers any more, so you have to do the work for them.
My sister ran a similar paper for a decade or so. The paper consisted mostly of local sports, city council doings, local news/crime, what the local churches and civic clubs were up to (pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners, bake sales, etc.), and the opening of new stores, restaurants, and the like. A big name lecturing at near-by college/university, not part of the formula.
But keep in mind, disparaging comments about the culture of Red States are classist and oppressive.
Does the Sun Tribune send reporters to campus events? Maybe they leave that beat to the campus paper. I wonder if maybe this is a town-vs.-gown thing.
Some years ago, while I was living in northern California, one of the local churches had a festival, where a 4 year old girl sang ‘Jesus loves me’.
It was the lead story on all the local news stations. Morning, noon, and night. For an entire week.
It was not a quiet news period. There was a lot going on nationally and internationally. But it was all less important than a cute little girl singing about jesus.
As a columnist for a local paper ( a bit larger than Morris, but still), I can tell you that the way to get noticed is to give beat reporters a head’s up. They can’t be everywhere and usually appreciate a lead, especially in areas in which they might be inexpert. Nye is a big name and would no doubt have been covered. why not give an editor a call and just ask what might have happened?
Sigh.
It’s another symptom of a decaying society, P.Z.
When banalities become more important than persons of education and learning, when half-baked rock stars gain more attention than Nobel laureates, it is a symptom of a fundamental intellectual decay that bodes ill for the Enlightenment itself.
A ruling aristocracy has learned how to keep the people distracted from their exploitation by providing them with bread and circuses. Cheap ones at that.
How do you prevent the reliving of history when people are deliberately kept uninterested in reading it?
Msadesign #10:
Yes.
Dr. Myers, you and/or your university PR people perhaps need to develop a relationship with the local paper, or at least with one of their reporters or editors. The presence of UMM undoubtedly has an impact on a small place like Morris, so it would be logical to expect the paper to make a little room for news from campus, a diary of public events, a bit of “science explained”, et cetera. It could be nice platofrm to raise some interest and promote a little understanding.
They do run stories on UMM sports teams, so reporters must have some idea that the university exists. But you could probably add up attendance at every sporting event all year and still have fewer people than went to see Bill Nye. You’d think that would make an impression.