Brains
*This article is the fifth article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard.
At some point this winter, hopefully soon, you’ll find yourself riding on a chairlift. Perhaps you’ll be pondering when your favorite ski area will finally be able to do the terrain expansion project that has been nothing but a rumor for years, or why there is still no way to get to that ski area without a car, or maybe you’ll simply be taking in acres of untouched powder. While government can’t do much to provide more of the latter, they have a major hand in other parts of the ski industry and its development. Journalists, whose work is so important that it is protected by the First Amendment, work to make sure that all levels of government are doing their best to serve the people who elected them.
From city council meetings to district court proceedings and congressional oversight committees, there are a lot of small, usually unnoticed goings-on at all levels of government that keep the wheels turning. Undergirding a major decision like the announcement of a new environmental rule or the approval of a development project is a long series of proposals, analyses, debates, and recommendations, many of which do not make headlines. Local journalism covers these proceedings, keeping an eye on what happens in the everyday business of our government. Without this coverage, stories slip through the cracks, the public becomes less informed, and politicians become less accountable. To be frank, sometimes the inner workings of our democracy can be quite mundane. Not every county commission meeting deals with approval of a twenty year development plan for a new base area and not every state or U.S. Supreme Court case deals with sweeping changes to ski law or environmental law. On the other hand, not every story published in a local paper is a world-changing revelation exposing previously unknown details about our government or its actions.
Many turnings of the wheel of government can be difficult to understand without detailed knowledge of how the system is supposed to work. While this opacity is not a design feature, it often results in a lack of engagement from the public, who may not posses the knowledge or experience necessary to keep track of what is happening. Journalists can leverage their knowledge along with communications skills to keep the public informed, bridging this gap. What makes journalism a foundational part of our democracy is its presence and continual coverage of the business of running a government, whether that is business as usual or something out of the ordinary. Someone has to sift through all of the agenda items, peruse environmental impact reports, keep track of who speaks up in debates, and let the public know when something happens. Those people are journalists.
Yet, instead of treating the press, specifically local press, as a critical Fourth Estate and part of our democracy, they have come to be known as for-profit businesses, and their failure and widespread disappearance has largely been attributed to a lack of interest in traditional journalism. As new technologies like the internet, social media, and now artificial intelligence continue to shrink the share of the public’s attention and thus the share of advertising dollars that local journalism can bring in, the overwhelming reaction to the crumbling of an institution dedicated to knowing when something smells fishy or doing the work to find out what the whole story might be, is a shrug. More than 3,400 newspapers have shut down in the U.S. since 2005, according to the Medill Journalism School at Northwestern University. Local news is fading, and as a result, the public is losing touch with its governments.
The ski industry finds itself in a rather unique niche for local journalism. Stories from the ski industry seldom break into the national media landscape, but—because of the role that skiing can play in the lives of its most dedicated practitioners, sometimes motivating major life decisions like career changes to free up more time in the winter, moving to mountain towns or purchasing second homes closer to favorite ski areas, or saving up for that once-in-a-lifetime trip—changes at ski resorts, like development projects and terrain expansions, can have a profound impact on people’s lives. Without coverage of these often massive and complicated projects, the skiing public is left with information about project details and progress from ski area marketing and communications departments, who are less likely to offer transparency when progress falters.
To illustrate the work that can go into some of this reporting, we’ll peel back the curtain a little bit on some reporting SnowBrains did last year on the Village at Palisades Tahoe project. At the time, Placer County was reconsidering approval for a major project redeveloping and significantly expanding the base area at Palisades Tahoe. The project had previously been approved, but a lawsuit had reversed that approval and a new environmental review and approval process was playing out amidst significant opposition from the public. In piecing together the full story of this project, SnowBrains conducted interviews with representatives of the group that brought the suit against the project and representatives of Palisades Tahoe, reviewed close to 4,000 pages of environmental impact reports, planning documents, and court filings and decisions, and attended more than ten hours of Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors meetings. All to make sure that there was balanced, detailed reporting about the project alongside press releases and marketing materials from project proponents and opponents.
Civics For Skiers has tried to take examples of big stories from the ski industry and break down the inner workings of various aspects of our government. Virtually all of these stories would go unnoticed if not for the diligent work of reporters at the Park Record, Aspen Times, SummitDaily, Moonshine Ink, Sierra Sun, and many, many other local papers that are still clinging on to survival. SnowBrains fits into this landscape of local papers, helping to bring additional focus on issues directly impacting the ski industry and outdoor recreation. But, for every story of a debate in a city council meeting about whether or not a lift ticket tax should be levied, there are countless others about housing policy, transportation, and of course, the budget. Many of these other aspects of governing a ski town, or any other town in the country, rely on coverage by local journalists to maintain public accountability of our governments to the people they represent.
More from the Civics For Skiers series:
- Civics For Skiers: How Local Governments Help Skiers Talk To Developers
- Civics For Skiers: State Laws Establish Responsibility For Skiers and Ski Areas
- Civics For Skiers: The Balance Between Recreation and Resource Extraction on Public Lands
- Civics For Skiers: How Courts Decide What the Law Says and Who Gets the Blame
More From Zach Armstrong:
- The Supreme Court Changed the National Environmental Protection Act. Here’s What It Means For The Ski Industry
- Trump’s Plan to Allow Drilling for Oil in the Arctic is Met With Limited Interest
- Inside Wisconsin’s Famous Birkebeiner Ski Marathon, One of the World’s Largest Cross-Country Races
- Trump Approves 211-Mile Mining Road Through Gates Of The Arctic National Park
- History with SnowBrains: The Incredible Notes from a Swiss Avalanche Researcher’s Travels to Western USA in 1949
- Sierra Nevada Resiliency Team Enters Second Season Supporting Ski Patroller Mental Health Across California and Nevada
