Whither the Tucson political media?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There was a Legislative District 28 candidate forum last evening: two senate candidates and five house candidates. It was advertised in the Arizona Daily Star political calendar and the Tucson Citizen blog, and of course here at Blog for Arizona. It's not like the local political media was not aware of this event.

Other than Ted Prezelski who writes the Rum, Romanism and Rebellion blog and is a House candidate, and David Safier who writes for Blog for Arizona and the Northwest Explorer as a columnist, there were no political media present.

Well you chumps blew it. The forum got off to a newsworthy event that could have filled some column space in today's Arizona Daily Star besides a front page above the fold story about a man and his dog appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show (I kid you not). What the hell is wrong with the editors of this rag? You didn't have any college interns you could have abused by assigning them to cover this forum for lousy class credit?

The fireworks began with a testy exchange between incumbent Senator Paula Aboud and her challenger former Rep. Ted Downing, whom Aboud defeated for the Senate seat in 2006. Rather than disclose what occurred now, the entire forum was videotaped by a Democratic Party volunteer who is busy with video editing to post the candidate speeches to YouTube and here at Blog for Arizona. I would rather have you see it for yourselves.

This is the sorry state of political media here in Tucson. Citizen reporting through this and other blogs is the only way that the public can be informed about the candidates and the issues that is not biased (directed) by the demands of the largest advertising customers of the local news media, i.e., realtors, home builders, car dealers, etc.

I want to strongly encourage Democratic candidates to videotape campaign events such as forums and debates, and to cut your own YouTube ads for your candidate web sites. The more notable examples will be reported here.