As the facts roll in on the PAETEC / Windstream buy-out, the thing that keeps getting under my skin is: Rochester is almost completely devoid of financial or economic news in any real sense.
PAETEC to be sold to Windstream | Democrat and Chronicle | democratandchronicle.com.
The CEO of Windstream says they’ve been looking at PAETEC for “a long time,” and both CEOs seem to know each other. I’m not saying that this deal absolutely would have been sniffed out with a better economic journalism team, but certainly, it would have been less of a surprise. Instead, we have people at the D&C and elsewhere who normally cover completely different topics struggling to understand and digest the details of the merger. That doesn’t bode well for an informed electorate.
What passes for economic news in this town ordinarily is the Rochester Business Journal and the D&C’s Business sections: two resources that might as well be RSS feeds for local company’s press releases. That’s when they’re doing good work. When they’re doing bad work, they’re producing dating videos for local businesses. “NonDescriptCompanyX enjoys long walks on the beach, hot cocoa and providing innovative, customized service solutions to its valued customers.”
But in this deference-rich, politely conservative Hobbit culture of Rochester where nobody’s allowed to ask difficult questions without being branded as a kill-joy, is it too much to ask that someone specialize in picking apart the details of the financial underpinnings of our economy? Maybe.