Council coverage falls off without Ahl; blogs pick up slack

It used to be that you could count on WCBU to cover any city council meeting held on a Tuesday night, including important budget discussions like the one happening tonight. But since former news director Jonathan Ahl left the station, coverage has fallen off. It appears now that only regular city council meetings (twice a month) are carried.

That’s unfortunate, because the council meeting tonight covers important budget issues facing the City of Peoria. What’s being discussed tonight is at least as important, if not more important, than the business taking place at the regular council meetings. Why have they stopped being covered?

Fortunately, there’s still one media outlet that’s covering the event live — Billy Dennis’ Peoria Pundit blog. All Billy needs to do is figure out a way to provide a live audio stream through his blog in addition to his running summary.