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06/01/2015

CBS news veteran Bob Schieffer makes case for newspapers

By Benjamin Marrison, Columbus Dispatch

I’ve always been a Bob Schieffer fan.

The 78-year-old journalist always put the story first and focused on providing the information that viewers needed to know. He struck me as the consummate professional. He’s signing off today from CBS’ Face the Nation after 46 years with the network.

Last week, I came across comments he made about his career and the future of news during an interview on Diane Rehm’s show on National Public Radio.

I paid attention because it was coming from Schieffer. What he said wasn’t groundbreaking, but the timing of his remarks were serendipitous.

Schieffer explained how he had started his career as a night police reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a beat he said is the best training ground a reporter can have.

He is concerned about newspapers, and offered these words about the quality of information available to the public:

“Unless some entity comes along and does what local newspapers have been doing all these years, we're gonna have corruption at a level we've never experienced.  ... So many papers now can’t afford to have a beat reporter. For example, many papers don’t have a city hall reporter anymore. They send somebody to cover the city council meetings, but to cover city hall, you have to be there every day and you have to know the overall story, not just report whatever happens on a particular day.”

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