Adult Children by Stephen Beals for June 20, 2023

Local newspapers are mostly gone, and the few remaining don’t have the staff or money to do investigations, and that is really screwing up politics — and it’s not just at the local level. If George Santos had run for Congress a few years ago the local newspapers would have investigated and exposed him as a phoney before the election and he would never have been elected. It would only have taken a few minutes for a reporter to discover his claims of education and work history were all lies, but these days the remaining local newspapers can’t afford to have a reporter spend a few minutes on the phone.