By Hans Wilder | Watertown Post
WATERTOWN, N.Y. — There is a peculiar danger that comes with sitting behind the same microphone for decades. Eventually, familiarity can start masquerading as accuracy. Jeff Graham, former mayor of Watertown and longtime local radio host, recently told listeners there are no florists left in Watertown. That would be a dramatic statement if it were true. The problem is that it is not.
Allen’s Florist & Pottery Shop is operating at 1092 Coffeen Street and describes itself as a full-service Watertown florist offering fresh arrangements, plants, gifts and local delivery. Next Step Floral Designs is operating at 19177 U.S. Route 11 and also identifies itself as a full-service florist serving Watertown and the surrounding area. Paris Gifts Baskets & Flowers is another local option, while Price Chopper and Sam’s Club both maintain floral departments in Watertown. Just outside the city, Jen’s Backroad Blooms serves customers throughout the greater Watertown area. In other words, the flowers did not pack up and leave town. Somebody simply failed to look.
That matters because Graham has spent years complaining about the lack of conservative media in Northern New York. Well, conservative media now exists. The Watertown Post exists. We built it specifically because this region needed another voice, another perspective and another outlet willing to challenge the comfortable little information loop that has dominated local media for years. Yet now that such an outlet actually exists, Graham seems perfectly content to ignore it while continuing to operate within the same familiar circle of local links, local personalities and local aggregators.
There is nothing inherently wrong with local media outlets linking to one another. Radio hosts can promote whoever they want, websites can feature whichever shows they want, and Graham is free to spend his airtime however he chooses. This is still a free country. But there is a difference between an information ecosystem and an echo chamber, and sometimes Northern New York media starts looking a little too much like the latter. The same people talk to the same people, the same links bounce back and forth, and eventually anything outside that circle apparently stops existing.
That is why the florist comment is more revealing than it might seem. Allen’s is not hidden somewhere forty miles away behind a barn. It is sitting on Coffeen Street in Watertown, taking orders and delivering flowers. Next Step is not a rumor. It has a storefront, a website and customers. These are real businesses operated by real people trying to make a living in this community. When a longtime radio personality tells the public that those businesses essentially do not exist, the businesses are the ones who get shortchanged.
A former mayor should understand that better than most. Small businesses in Watertown do not need local media personalities casually writing them out of existence. Every customer matters. Every mention matters. Every person who hears there is no local florist and decides to spend money somewhere else matters. This is not about whether Jeff Graham likes the Watertown Post. He does not have to like us, promote us or even acknowledge us. But facts still have to be facts.
The larger problem is the old-media habit of assuming that whatever exists inside a familiar local circle represents the entirety of reality. That may have worked when a handful of newspapers, television stations and radio microphones controlled nearly every local conversation. Those days are gone. The internet opened the windows, and independent local media now has the ability to challenge lazy assumptions in real time.
So here is the correction. Watertown has florists. Watertown has independent media. Watertown has conservative media. New voices exist, whether the old guard chooses to acknowledge them or not.
And Jeff, if you need proof, take a drive down Coffeen Street.
You might even stop and smell the roses.
About the Author
