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-Gabe

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But they don't. And we're all losers because of it.

There are two stellar exceptions, the final remnants of California's vanishing breed: NBC affiliate KCRA in Sacramento and an independent Sacramento-based hookup called Capitol Television News Service, which offers feeds to subscribers statewide.

Both do excellent work, and both are respected by print and broadcast journalists alike. But KCRA's Kevin Riggs and CTNS' Stephen Mallory, a veteran network reporter, reflect the exceptions to television's general mantra that state politics is a snooze. Why devote time to talking heads when a station can cover such events as freeway chases, murders and bloody automobile crashes?

The answer to that question, for most stations, is obvious. When the 1980s began, major stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles had Sacramento correspondents. Now, they are gone.

Those of us trained in print journalism have a natural antipathy toward our television colleagues: They look much better than we do, they make more money, they often reach more people in one two-minute segment than we reach all week, they enjoy public recognition, they are sought after by political leaders who well know the power of television.

Good print reporters console themselves, rightly, that their stories have depth, nuance and precision and they know, again rightly, that print stories often set the agenda for broadcast coverage. With few exceptions, the best investigative work in California is done by print, not television. But the enduring sense of a story for most people stems not what they read in their newspapers or online, but what they saw in a televised snippet. This rankles.

With the exception of obvious media events -- an inauguration, the last night of the Legislature's session, the final vote on a major piece of legislation -- most Capitol business is ignored by television. Since most people get their news from television, this means that most people don't know what's going on in their own government.

Oddly, this seems to be something of a California phenomenon. Television reporters who have covered politics in other major states such as New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois say that TV political coverage there is far more comprehensive. In a New York Senate race, for example, one reporter recalled a half-dozen stations or more at each campaign stop during the final month of the campaign. If Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for the Senate in New York, by the way, that number probably will double.

Compare that to California's recent Senate race between Barbara Boxer and Matt Fong, where the candidates were lucky to have a single camera present, even during the final week. What an irony in such a media-rich state like California!

In the end, less coverage is bad. The more reporters at an event, the more likely it is that the coverage will be better because each reporter, television or print, brings a unique perspective to a story.

So come on, TV: Get off the freeways and into the Capitol. Tell viewers if their taxes are going up, if their children's classrooms are decent and if their water is clean.

Now's the time.

The press has been giving Mr. Davis considerable silence, perhaps being as surprised as I am that he seems to be making some practical moves in developing good stewardship in the environmental arena. To the Gaia-worshipping environmentalists, this is sacrilege, but to the rest of us it is striking a biblical balance of making use of as well as caring for and about God's gifts in the natural resources we enjoy.

I complained to my local paper two years ago that MTBE was going to be a problem, and even then, on the Web one could only find oil company/government self-serving support for the stuff. While I'm no bellwether for the health of the nation, I noticed an increase in respiratory problems when MTBE was introduced -- nothing serious, just a lot of extra sinus activity and a constant clearing cough, which is worse in the months when MTBE is in gasoline. The stuff runs, not walks, through the vadose zone into the water table, lacking anything a self-respecting microorganism would like to eat. There are ways to remove it, but EPA and Cal-EPA have been moribund on enhanced natural processes for so long that the solution may be a long time coming.

Gerald V. Todd
Bakersfield, CA

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