A response to the NYT article, "State Budget in California Sets Record for Tardiness"

As of today, California's state budget was, "64 days late, and counting — so long overdue that it has eclipsed the record for tardiness set by the budget impasse of 2002," writes Jennifer Steinhauer. I’ve been hearing it constantly on the news. Strikes, unhappy people and shocking polls on our declining state budget are constantly on our TV screens. They tell us that workers at the DMV are standing up against the minimum wage decrease with a strike. They show our state controller John Chiang being questioned by a mass of reporters trying to get details on minimum wage. We hear that over 600,000 residents of California have suffered unemployment in this year alone. This doesn’t only effect the workers in our state, either. Students are losing Cal Grants and “art classes at one high school have moved to the lawn because the school district cannot afford new portable classrooms,” writes Steinhauer.

Since this is a story I’ve heard again and again from our LA stations, reading about our state budget from the perspective of the NY times was, of course, drastically different in style, the angle it took and the tone. The difference in style primarily came from the difference in broadcast news and print news. On TV, they tell me the stories like I’m in the 5th grade and I found the NY Times article to be slightly more articulated and opinionated. The news stations in LA centered the angle of this story on our own community and looked deeper into how this state budged affected our local economy. The NY times used their angle to emphasize the effects of this budget crisis to our nation. The tone is what I found most contrasting and different between this article in the NY Times and the LA news shows I’ve seen. The difference? In my opinion, Steinhauer portrayed a negative attitude on California’s budget crisis that was separate from the issue itself.

Although I find both local and national news to have equal but different insight into issues such as these, the perspective that this national news reporter gave is one that I found more questionable (and depressing) than informative. For example, the article mentioned more on California’s always irresponsible budget management than it did on how this has been affecting our residents. Discussing irresponsible budget management in an article that’s titled, “State Budget in California Sets Record for Tardiness” in my opinion, isn’t even a part of the story. Steinhauer also mentioned that, “the California Legislature reached a milestone that few would wish to turn into a bumper sticker.” Frankly, that isn’t the first sentence I want to read about concerning my economy.

A $15 billion gap in our state budget is something that not only affects our nation on a whole, but is something that individuals in California have to deal with. I found this article was articulated in a way that understated the "record for tardiness" and I found that it overemphasized the chaos this is causing in California.