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GandhiOwnsYou t1_j1v00e1 wrote

Like it or not, yeah. Every smaller city gets pigeonholed with some stereotype, we got “burned down in the civil war.” Every time I see a Richmond article it’s always the same thing. I’m not saying there’s not an element of truth, but you’d think after 15 years of the same thing, people wouldn’t be playing the rebuilding/wrestling-with-the-past bullet points in every single article.

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Charlesinrichmond OP t1_j1v0arm wrote

Modern journalism is all about phoning it in

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goodsam2 t1_j1vl5ut wrote

Lack of budget these days to deal with harder hitting stories.

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crankitup29 t1_j1vsm9h wrote

The NYT has a dang good budget

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goodsam2 t1_j1vsz8x wrote

But the deep dives on some local issues. If they want to spend the money they can but their revenue is down by 2/3 since 2006 and the Richmond local papers aren't laying some ground work for them in the same way.

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loptopandbingo t1_j1vvl0t wrote

Every Times Dispatch article about NYC should start with "New York City, a haven for Loyalists fleeing the American colonies, was occupied by the British until the absolute very end of the Revolution and will forever be defined that way. It's really coming into its own now though."

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pocketdare t1_j1wn477 wrote

Speaking of which, has Boston recovered from it's history of revolutionary zeal and anti-taxation propaganda activists?

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darockerj t1_j1vjkqy wrote

Right? I realize every article needs an angle, but “how it was recovering?” The specters of the civil war and institutional racism loom over the city, but you’d think there were buildings still smouldering from 1865.

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crankitup29 t1_j1vtii1 wrote

I wondered if the recovery was from covid? It was vague.

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GandhiOwnsYou t1_j1w5gjc wrote

Recovery being vague is kind of the thing. Richmond is always viewed in a lens as “recovering” from something. Civil war, reconstruction, world wars, “economic troubles” of various varieties, our “troubled past.”

On the one hand, it’s good because we always seem to get a little bit of a pass. On the other, it’s really fucking condescending. “Aw, look at this little city, it’s so cute how they have these adorable cafes and microbreweries even though just yesterday they were a bunch of murder capital racist drug corridor confederates!” These articles read with the same good natured superiority as when you compliment a little kid for being dad’s big helper working on the deck.

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