Editorial: The importance of local news
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The news is everywhere. It’s filling up your cellphone and your inbox and your Facebook feed. It’s on for 24 hours on stations devoted to updating you on what they just updated you about. It crawls across the bottom of the screen while you are trying to watch something else and pops up interrupting you with breaking alerts that really don’t seem that earthshattering.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the news, like you are drowning in a tidal wave of things happening from Washington, to London to Myanmar. What does Brexit have to do with you in Allegheny County? Why do you care about what an Alabama legislator is doing when you live in Greensburg?
The questions don’t just have one answer. On the one hand, maybe it doesn’t have much interest for you. On the other, you should have access to that information if you choose to read it rather than be force-fed.
The bigger issue is that when we turn away from the news because we are overwhelmed with the loud, blaring stories, we miss the ones that do impact us every day.
And that is why local news is so important.
According to a 2019 Knight-Gallup study, while many people are leery about national media and can tend to skew in one direction or the other based on their politics and the real or perceived slant of the organization, there is more trust for local news providers, which are seen as more caring, trustworthy and neutral.
Maybe that’s because you know us. We are the paper that printed your birth announcement and the one your dad read with his morning coffee.
But it might also be because we know you.
The national news might tell you about a tax increase. Local news tells you how it impacts the factory where you work. The national news tells you about a drug problem. Local news tells you how your neighbor lost her daughter to it. The national news follows the election. The local news helps you learn about the candidates and the issues, even if they aren’t the top of the ticket.
Sadly, a lot of local news organizations are being sold or closed and leaving more and more areas without that trusted source of information. CNN will never tell you about the road project down the street and how long it will disrupt your commute. USA Today knows nothing about your school board and how much a 1 mill tax bump will mean on your house.
But the Neighborhood News Network — Trib Total Media’s websites focused on hyperlocal issues and stories — does tell you that.
The news around the corner is not just as important as the news around the country and the globe. In many day-to-day ways, it can have a more immediate impact. Where your money is going, what your leaders are doing, what your community cares about.
That news — the stuff that isn’t filling up your phone or jumping out at you from social media — is still out there and it still means something.