DECLINE HERE? DON'T BELIEVE IT! headlined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Page One last week. Other newspapers from Seattle to Savannah were doing their unlevel best to bull their way through one of the nation's biggest—and most botched—running stories: the recession. Though more than 50.000 workers are out of jobs in Georgia's four largest cities, the Atlanta Journal has zealously kept the state's slump off the front page, and, until last week, even banned the word recession from the paper.
Since the severity of the recession varied widely from region to region, it was not a big local story for all newspapers....