Meanwhile, Richmond television station WTVR wasn’t about to be left out of his particular pork barrel. The station’s Mark Holmberg opined on his own experiences at the eatery—and his thoughts about Romney’s ad—while also drawing on some colorful local reaction. Here’s his lede (click here for the video):

You have to be a blind supporter of President Obama’s to say the economy hasn’t been tough for the past four years.

But you also have to be a blind critic of the president to blame him for the closing of Bill’s Barbecue.

In my view, this longtime Richmond institution has no one to blame but itself.

A new, sad and heartfelt Romney/Ryan campaign ad getting national attention shows Bill’s owner Rhoda Elliott tearfully blaming the economy, and President Obama’s handling of it, for the death of this family-owned institution.

“That’s a bunch of frackanackle bull!” said Agnes Hawkins, a lifelong Richmond resident who estimates she has eaten at Bill’s more than a thousand times. She says the business has slipped in recent years, with poor service and prices. She blames bad management, not the Oval Office.
It’s succinct, insightful, and fun (hey, it’s not every day that you get to work “frackanackle” into a story). It’s also an illustration of how politics, and news, is still local—and of how media can draw on local knowledge to help us determine if we’re getting a pig in a poke in a campaign’s claims.

Tharon Giddens logged more than two decades in newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina as a writer and editor. He is now living on an alpaca farm east of Richmond, Virginia.