Term-limited State Sen. Bruce Patterson, R-Canton Township, is the kind of leader you wish wasn’t being forced to leave office.

Officially, a Republican, he is independent minded and not afraid to express his views. He’s also the kind of Lansing leader that you know wouldn’t be afraid to cross party lines if he felt there was an issue worth supporting.
As he states in talking about legislators, “I don’t think its enough to self-describe ourselves as a Democrat or Republican. It take more courage to vote for a tax increase than it does to borrow money and increase the debt. Elected people need to take their constitutional oath of office seriously.”

The outspoken Patterson has been quite verbal on his campaign to wake up journalists to their role.

He has said he is worried that with so many newspapers in financial trouble, our state and nation may lose what are the pillars of our democracy.
In fact, he felt newspaper were so important he introduced Senate Bill 1285, which supposedly would have put a deposit on every newspaper sold, similar to the bottle deposit.

He later admitted he didn’t have any intention of seeing the bill through the legislature and passed into law, he just wanted to get our attention. He did.

Once we woke up, we noticed a second bill, Senate Bill 1323, that Patterson also said was geared to making his point about the importance of newspapers and particularly reporters. This second bill would have established a voluntary state registry of reporters, listing their credentials.

It’s not a bad idea although don’t look for it anytime soon.
The second bill is a bit more critical of the press.

“The idea again,” Patterson explains, “is to try and provoke thought to get people to understand that our democratic system is heavily reliant on the media being able to get information to ‘we. The people.’ What I have witnessed is fewer and fewer reporters actually coming in to (legislative sessions) and reporting what we do.”
He’s right again. Unfortunately, limited staff and resources makes it more difficult, if not impossible to cover some events and government sessions in person. The Oakland Press used to have a Lansing reporter but we lost that person to budget cuts. Now, we rely on wire service news and the free-lance work of Tim Skubick.
Patterson continued “Senate Bill 1323 was designed to get people to realize there are different levels of people who report the news. I had assumed every reporter had a journalism degree, but that’s not true.”

Experience has always played a key role in a reporter or journalist’s career. A degree can get a person into the newsroom for an interview but experience usually is what gets that individual the job. Skill and talent are important but experience is what hones those characteristics and turns a graduate of Journalism into a good reporter.
The role of newspapers and its reporters is critical to our society. The fact newspapers are addressed in the first amendment to the Constitution is a testament to how our founding fathers felt about the press.

Patterson sums it up quite nicely when he says “The job of a reporter is very very important if this constitutional republic is to survive.”