City Government
A Change Of Attack At The GUARDIAN
August 28, 2019 
By DAVE FRAZIER, editor
When I started the GUARDIAN almost 15 years ago it filled a void in local news coverage aimed at serving as…well, the GUARDIAN for folks suffering from the revolving door for reporters at the TV stations and the decline of what we called “The Daily Paper.”
The internet provided a version of a printing press and broadcast transmitter that allowed us to fill the void in local media coverage. The Statesman doesn’t even own a printing press!
For a while the legacy media picked up GUARDIAN stories or did their own reporting on the same subject. Eventually they saw the GUARDIAN as competition, launched improved websites, and joined forces to provide more online news coverage. Even the media outlets have consolidated to the point we hardly know who works where.
Enter Don Day and his BOISEDEV site. Day has established himself as a credible news source and breaks stories almost daily which are ignored or missed by the legacy reporters.
One of his latest stories details the influence of Boise Mayor DAVE BIETER. The accompanying chart details the Bieter control and influence over almost every aspect of local government.
This type of exhaustive reporting takes time and effort. I must confess that I don’t have the energy or motivation to do the work Day has strapped on.
The newest group of local reporters are talented, but for the most part they are hindered by youth and inexperience. I recently chatted with a young legacy outlet reporter and learned that I covered Idaho stories before even her mother was born!
A major change over the past half century has been the almost total control of the news by government “spokespersons.” I would argue that MOST of today’s local news comes from government “reporters.” Their media releases are often not even rewritten. There are probably more information specialists at government agencies than working for all the legacy news outlets.
While I will still post stories on the GUARDIAN, it has become less taxing to offer “assigned reading” links and contribute more than 50 years of “institutional memory” to the local news scene.
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Aug 28, 2019, 3:45 pm
….and we love you for it too, Dave !!!
Aug 28, 2019, 5:19 pm
Dave.
Thanks for all you have done and I’m sure will still do. Without your insight, we would not be nearly as far along in our efforts to oust the mayor and his bunch of greedy cronies.
Keep up the good fight!
Best.
J. Jones
Northend
Sep 2, 2019, 7:01 pm
First, we thank you David for laying the groundwork for online muckraking that this community sorely needed. I remember back when the Auditorium District first reared its ugly head and you took up the lance to pierce it. You are still a giant in our eyes.
Now, many kudos to Don Day for his carrying the baton of truth seeking. Scanning the graphic that Don Day provided, I see all of the usual suspects in what I personally allege is a web of agenda pushing beyond any legit scope of City governance. When Obama visited Boise in 2015, I had already fingered his Operation Longevity as a social engineering plot that he and his followers had been peddling all over the nation. I figure that the Boise visit was no less of an opportunity for such activities. I suspect that M Jordan and the rest of the Council are fully on board with Longevity.
This network deals in more than just real estate scams and money and sweetheart deals, I suspect.