November Editorial Winner

Opinion: A Changing of Times

By Connor Choate, Marietta Monitor

It doesn’t take long to notice things in this world are changing. 

As an industry, newspapers are assumed to be a dying breed but their importance is now greater than ever.

When I visited a local high school recently to talk about journalism, I asked a simple question, “What does the newspaper mean to you?” My favorite and most honest answer I received: “The thing my grandfather reads.”

According to a Microsoft Corporation survey, the average attention span for an adult is 8.25 seconds, which is shorter than that of a goldfish. It’s no surprise that a Gallup survey from 2021 showed fewer Americans are reading books. In short, most people do not have the attention span to sit down and read a newspaper or really anything longer than a few sentences. 

Ok, you can go check your phone real quick and come back to this article later.

This terrifying trend has a real effect on our ability to decipher what is truth and what is not.

Long gone are the days where we hear both sides of an argument and most times a meme is circulated to clarify a point of view instead of a well-researched article.

People are going to social media platforms for news instead of their local news media. Celebrities, politicians and even local governments have flocked to social media in an attempt to control the narrative or promote themselves. 

This leads some to either lose trust of local media or ignore them flat out, for which if we are not careful will be the end of our democracy as a whole. 

Anytime the government or politicians start using social media as a mouthpiece for promoting themselves it should raise suspicion. 

There is nothing more un-American than a government agency or politician telling you what is news and what is not. That has never been and should never be their role.

In a recent City Council meeting, the City of Marietta pro-posed a Community Liaison position, whose job description included: managing and creating social media content for the city, boosting customer satisfaction, working to resolve conflicts with the public and representing the City of Marietta at community functions. The meeting was originally reported in the  October 14 issue of the Monitor.

Don’t worry if you are asking yourself, “Well, what will the Mayor or City Manager do then?” You’re not the only one as it’s a question I have fielded many times since the article published.

During this meeting, our Mayor and City Manager used “brand” more than once to refer to Marietta. The term “brand” is something you normally don’t associate with a town’s government and you shouldn’t. It’s a term companies use when marketing products to sell, not for governing a city.

Plus, why would a town of 2,750 people need a position that costs taxpayer money for “brand” identity and do the job of those that we have already elected and paid to do? 

Instead of building their “brand” through paying someone $41,000+ a year, they should set out to accomplish the goals for which they took office, primarily repairing and paving roads, their largest budgeted item in 2022, yet have fixed only a few roads this year. As of now, our “brand” is terrible roads, and social media posts will not repair a road. 

The city is paying someone $1,000 per month to post on their Facebook account yet they have never posted the City Council agenda, meeting minutes or even encouraged citizens to attend public meetings.

The City of Ardmore’s Facebook, along with other towns of our size, do all of those things, even going so far to livestream public meetings for those who are not able to attend. 

Instead, the City of Marietta’s Facebook page has been used to post about free puppies, factoids on local parks and the occasional road closure. Seldom has it operated like other local governments’ Facebook pages and produces half-baked PR articles that come across more ostentatious than informative.

Our elected officials should seriously question the motive behind creating a position that adds such little value to Marietta when there are other more productive and profitable things the city could do with $41,000+ a year.

For example: continuing with road repairs and paving (which was budgeted for unlike this proposed position), revamping a local park or encouraging local development and business through a cooperative effort with the Love County Chamber of Commerce and the Love County Industrial Foundation. Both  are entities that were created for the sole purpose of promoting and recruiting business to Marietta. 

The city and government agencies should have the ability to interact with their citizens but it should 
never be their primary focus of energy or taxpayer dollars. Furthermore local government should work in unison with its established outlets, not decide to just create a position in order not to deal with them outright. 

Newspapers have always played the role of informing its citizens, and our fore-fathers saw the news media’s role as an important part of our nation’s democracy: a free and responsible press. 

If it wasn’t for the Monitor attending City Council meetings, you probably would have never known about this position and it could have passed with very little discussion or questioning. 

When was the last time you made a $41,000+ purchase that you didn’t consult your spouse? Yet government does this frequently with the citizens footing the bill.

Or if something nefarious or illegal is to actually happen in local government, do you really think their Community Liaison is going to promote it as part of their “brand”? Probably not. Social media pages show you only the good, seldom the bad or even mundane.

Some might walk away from this article mad or want to start a subscription (we do take credit cards over the phone, by the way), but more than that, I would like for you to walk away wanting to get more involved within the community you live in. A community is only as good as its citizens.

At the Monitor, we have always believed that an informed citizen is a good one. It’s part of our “brand”.