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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Not Law - Evansville C&P reporter Bryan Corbin leaves paper

There are certain Indiana reporters whose stories I always look for. Bryan Corbin of the Evansville Courier & Press certainly has been one of them. A top notch reporter, I particularly followed his weekly summing up of the General Assembly activities. Today I searched the paper for his name and found only this story:

Nineteen years is a long time to do anything, and that's how long I've been a working journalist at Indiana newspapers.

It ended Friday. I am leaving the Courier & Press to take a media-relations job in Indianapolis.

You've heard how the economic meltdown has hit the newspaper industry especially hard. Newspaper companies' revenues have fallen off a cliff, forcing some papers to make massive layoffs and others to close.

Seeking a safe employment harbor in the economic storm is part of my reason for leaving my longtime profession. But I've also wanted to find a new challenge through which I could serve the public in a different way. * * *

Thanks to the legislators, attorneys, court staff, judges and prosecutors who went the extra mile to explain how our legal system works. Judge Wayne Trockman, Judge David Kiely, Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco and Deputy Prosecutor Donita Farr were always generous with their time. Special thanks to the late attorney Cole Banks, who was interviewed by this newspaper many times as a legal and political analyst. Thanks to you who read my articles and columns, in print and online, and took the time to e-mail, call or even drop a handwritten letter in the mail. The compliments and complaints all were appreciated.

Having now changed careers, I'm rooting for my former colleagues who remain in the newspaper business, but the road ahead for them is very tough. Now more than ever, society needs newspaper journalists, since it is they — not TV, not bloggers — who primarily hold politicians, bureaucrats and powerful institutions accountable to the public.

If you want your daily newspaper to continue to be around to perform that vital watchdog role, then you should not only subscribe, you should also patronize those businesses that advertise in the newspaper and on its Web site. Newspaper viability is crucial not just to the future of an individual company but to the preservation of a free society.

So in looking back, I wish each of you in Southwestern Indiana the best during the rocky months ahead. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of sharing your stories.

And thank you, reporter Bryan Corbin.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 10, 2009 01:04 PM
Posted to General News