Former Portland Press Herald Reporter Jonathan Kaplan has an interesting column in The Washington Post this morning about the dwindling press corps in Washington. 

Kaplan was laid off from the Press Herald in a recent round of layoffs that resulted in the closure of the paper’s Washington D.C. and Augusta bureaus.

Kaplan writes:

“The biggest losers in these cutbacks, of course, are the citizens of Maine and the other states where newspapers have closed their Washington bureaus. My main gripe is that the loss of regional reporters just gives one more advantage to incumbents seeking reelection. Even in 2006, a year in which a Democratic tide swept Republicans out of office, 94 percent of incumbents in the House were reelected, as were 79 percent of those in the Senate, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan Web site that keeps track of election spending and data.”

Check it out here.