Cross had been tracking the gradual decline of Kentucky political journalism for 30 years. For much of his reportorial tenure in Frankfort the Courier-Journal assigned five reporters to the statehouse . At any given time during that period, there were often 15 fulltime journalists covering the statehouse and as many as 30 during the legislative session. Our mission was to keep the bastards from stealing the dome off the capitol, says Cross. He adds, I put that in the past tense, because they are incapable of fulfilling that mission now. [1]

Listen to Cross describe the Kentucky media market.

By the fall of 2009, just seven fulltime journalists covered state politics in Kentucky . The Courier-Journal assigned only two reporters to the statehouse. As a consequence, Kentucky s leading papers had come to practice what Cross called hit and run journalism: they rotated statewide political issuesthe budget, taxes, courts, and so forth in and out of the paper as high profile stories surfaced.

Listen to Barnes talk about the significance of the Courier-Journal 's absence in the political and state reporting landscape.

Civic price. Evidence was emerging that these cutbacks had measurable political consequences. In spring 2009, Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, a Princeton economist and former journalist, published a working paper that examined the political ramifications of the 2007 closing of the Cincinnati Post on the citys Kentucky suburbs. Schulhofer-Wohl found that the following year fewer candidates ran for office, voters turned out in lower numbers, and incumbents were more likely to win re-election. Although our findings are statistically imprecise, Schulhofer-Wohl wrote, they demonstrate that newspapers, even underdogs such as the Post , which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed, can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life. [2]

Equally troubling to Cross, the Courier-Journal and its chief competitor, the Lexington Herald-Leader, no longer made it their goal to serve as statewide papers. Their coverage focused increasingly on the urban cores of Louisville and Lexington . Yet 43 percent of Kentucky s population was rural. Cross, who grew up in rural Kentucky , was particularly worried about how these people would get political news. As it stood, most of them depended on Kentucky s quilt of county dailies and weeklies. Several of these papers were owned by small chains, but only oneCommunity Newspaper Holdings, Inc.stationed a reporter in the capital. The rest relied on the AP for legislative reporting.

But the AP had also cut back. For much of the 80s and 90s, the AP staffed its main Kentucky bureau in Louisville with a bureau chief, news editor, day and night desk supervisors, a chief of communications, several technicians, and three reporters who traveled the state. The AP also fielded a two-reporter team in Frankfort , which grew to three during the legislative session. In addition, it had single-reporter bureaus in Lexington and Pikeville. By 2009, the Louisville bureau had been pared down to one reporter, the Pikeville station had been closed, and AP no longer brought in a third reporter to help out in Frankfort .

Cross knew that Kentucky s 125 rural weeklies did not have the manpower to provide capital coverage. The states 24 rural dailies, on the other hand, were capable of picking up some slack. But he wasnt hopeful. Most, in Crosss view, tended to take a hyperlocaleven parochialapproach to political reporting by at once heavily favoring county-based stories and then failing to place them in the context of statewide politics. Cross had founded the Institute for Rural Journalism to address this problem, primarily through a website for reporters interested in linking rural issues to national stories. For all its ambition, though, the IRJ was essentially a one-man operation.