The more I read national "news," the more I want to stay away from that world. Local news is where you find the good stuff anyway.
At a local level, you find the stories that validate journalism as a contribution to society. Whether it's a story about a downtown revitalization project or a report on area schools, local news seems to always look toward the future with a sense of hope and optimism.
Local economy stagnant? Let's find out how people are making it better. New businesses? New restaurants? New housing?
Poor standardized test scores? Let's ask the school systems what they're doing to improve education.
Record-high gas prices? Let's see how factory workers and stay-at-home moms are adapting.
You see, local news is all about forward-thinking, and it's stuff that matters to real people.
Average Joe doesn't want to hear why Oliver Stone thinks Bush is the worst president in history. Or about the falling-out between Obama and his psychotic former pastor.
It'll be interesting to see if news becomes more localized as print journalism dies.
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4 comments:
keep blogging you fool!
I thought you might be interested in this little tidbit:
I talked to my old editor at the community newspaper I used to work for. And he had a couple interesting insights into what is going down in the world of community newspaper journalism.
-For one, he's finding it harder, for some reason, to staff the paper. It seems, he says, that journalism students are less interested in "pounding the pavement" at the small out-of-the way papers before moving on to bigger and better things, after they get out of journalism school. Why? He's not sure...
-Community newspapers will survive longer than most -- because they occupy a niche that no one else can fill.
-The other editor there said that the paper is moving more towards an online presence and away from the traditional newsprint format. Because now, in the world of the web, they have to compete, not just against other newspapers, but also against the radio stations that have adopted an online version of their newscasts.
Thanks, surfpunkkid!
I think we all see the papers moving away from print and towards web-publishing.
Lots of guys -- like Ryan Sholin, Howard Owens, and Jeff Jarvis -- blog about this very phenomenon all the time.
What is weird in my mind is the opinion that young journalists are less willing to "pound the pavement" at small local papers.
I'm excited to hit the streets every day, doing my profession once I earn my degree.
Local papers surviving longer than most makes sense to me though, since they do provide coverage of local news that can't necessarily be found all over the Web.
interesting that you say that. i, personally, do tend to care about local news more. however, it's also good to know what's going on in washington, things that are happening around the country, etc.
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