#Microblog Monday 312: Local News
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I love local news. I forgot how much I like local news until I read an ode to why local journalism is important in a newsletter. I’m not talking about the town listserv or a Facebook group—I’m talking about the weekly newspaper that you can pick up in the front lobby of the library or have mailed to your home.
It is rarely depressing in the way that the national news is depressing. And it’s exciting when someone I know is featured in the paper; they become a mini local celebrity. When we go to Chincoteague, I always pick up their local newspaper and read it to catch up on things because we know so many of the names and places in those pages, too.
Do you have a local newspaper? And do you read it?
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10 comments
I honestly don’t know if we still have one, because my annoying husband throws it away before I ever see it! But my sister got her start in journalism/ communications working on a local newspaper, so I feel I should support them.
Have you seen Ricky Gervais’programme about grief? It’s surprisingly wonderful. And it’s based around a community newspaper.
Love Anne Helen Petersen! 🙂 I get her newsletter too.
I am a firm believer in the importance of local news — like Mali’s sister, I got my start in the business as a reporter for the weekly paper in the small town where my parents were living. It was owned by the same local family for almost 100 years before it was sold to a chain. The corporation that owned it ran it into the ground and actually closed it & a bunch of other weekly newspapers a few months ago 🙁 but happily, a couple of others have risen up to take their places. The one in my mother’s hometown in NW Minnesota has been publishing for well over 100 years too… I’m amazed (but very grateful) that it’s still hanging in there.
We do have a local paper here. It’s owned by a chain (TorStar = the Toronto Star) & is mostly advertising, delivered free to homes a couple of times a week — but not to our condo building. I see it when we’re at SIL’s & occasionally remember to check out the website online. I wrote a post a few years back about how I gave up on trying to get a paper delivered when we moved here. 🙁 I have ALWAYS subscribed to at least one and often two daily papers since I was in university. I now have some digital subscriptions (to the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail, as well as the New York Times & Washington Post), but it’s not the same as flipping through the pages while eating my breakfast. 🙁
We have a daily paper that I grew up reading bc like most households we had a subscription. It was bought by one of those conglomerates 10 or so years ago and gutted—most staff let go etc. it’s now a shell of what it used to be. Occasionally I’ll read an article online but you run out of the allotted free articles pretty quick. And it’s not worth paying for in its current state.
We also have a progressive weekly paper. It’s moved to having more frequent online articles with the pandemic. There’s also a less progressive weekly paper here.
I have a total lack of local news, since where we live we don’t get local channels on the antenna and we don’t have cable, and our local newspaper is…problematic. I see updates on social media from local sources, but our local paper has this annoying, negative, clickbait type focus. Everything is like “Snowstorm coming! Will We All Die?” with pictures of semis overturned on the highway during the freak storm in Buffalo forever ago. It’s all about the restaurants that have closed their doors forever, and everything wrong with everything. It makes me a little sad, actually.
We do get a little free Post for our town we live in, and that can be a little less awful. I should probably make more of an effort to keep up in that one!
We do…I think. I have read through it periodically while eating breakfast at the kitchen table, but I never thought of it how you said. And really, it may not even count as a “local paper.” We get it seasonally, and it’s more updates on construction, classes and the like.
I live in Phoenix, and we have more than one local newspaper. I confess I don’t read any of them regularly, though. And I don’t enjoy watching local newscasts because they seem very amateurish most of the time.
But I get your drift because I grew up in a small town with a weekly newspaper, and it was a lot more pleasant to read than the national/international news!
We haven’t received the local newspaper regularly since we moved from New Orleans. But I do prefer watching local news broadcast over national newscast.
I’m so fond of my hometown newspaper. It’s a weekly, and I’ve been reading it most of my life. I think the journalism in it is pretty good, too.
I actually hate the local news…it’s always full of awful headlines and nothing new that I can’t find elsewhere. We subscribe to the newspaper because my husband loves to read print news, but it’s crazy expensive so we get a limited delivery and only when they offer a great deal. I don’t read it. If I need to know the weather, I have a trusty weather app. It’s been years and years since I watched a complete local news broadcast.
I have neglected my blog of late – Promising myself to blog every day during lockdown didn’t work out either, but when I checked yesterday, I discovered thousands of views last month, when it used to be a few hundred.
Many are from people here, and I’d like to thank you all.