Final Reflective Blog Post- JOUR 375
Despite the influence of national news and the increase of digital news, community journalism continues to play a vital role in people’s lives. People depend on local journalists for information that directly impacts their communities and families. Without local news coverage, communities become uniformed and less engaged in society.
As technology advances, local news organizations will need to adapt and reach their communities in new ways. While digital media has created challenges for broadcast media and has led to a decrease in print publications, local news media can use digital tools such as social media and electronic publications to engage with their audiences and reach more people. Because of the demand for internet news, Jock Lauterer, author of Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local encourages community newspaper publishers to embrace the internet: “Does your newspaper have an online edition? It better. Is is interactive? It should be.” Online publications are a positive extension of a news organization’s paper and will be what keeps local news thriving.
Community journalism affects communities by providing answers to the important questions that people have about issues that affect their daily lives. For example, local news provides answers to people in a community about how government polices at the national and state level affect them, their children’s education, their jobs, taxes, and public safety. In the article COLUMN: Coronavirus proves why local journalism is so important, Dean Ridings writes that community journalists “are your neighbors — and they’ve got your back.” This statement embodies the role that local journalists play in difficult times when people need answers.
Using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example, local journalism has affected communities in a vital way this year. In the article, COLUMN: Coronavirus proves why local journalism is so important, Ridings considers local journalists front-line workers during the pandemic because of how they have served their communities: “Local newspapers, in their digital and print forms, immediately report critical breaking news of the fast-moving coronavirus public health crisis in their communities.” People turn to local news in desperate circumstances because local journalists are able to provide the most accurate, relevant, and specific information in a crisis to a community.
There is too much at stake to lose local news. Without local news, people can not be informed about the issues involving their community. Local news provides coverage of the cities, towns, and people that make up America. According to Lauterer, community journalism is “The heartbeat of American journalism. Journalism in its natural state.”
Local news outlets are also institutions that hold the powerful accountable and encourage civic engagement. A lack of local news in society puts our democracy in jeopardy. According to research conducted by Danny Hayes and Jennifer L. Lawless in the article The Decline of Local News and Its Effects, the erosion of local news coverage has led to a decline in local political participation: “Observers’ concerns about political engagement in communities across the United States appear very much justified.” Local news is critical in informing people about candidates for local and state offices and therefore critical to the representative democracy of the United States.
A lack of community journalism causes people to turn to and rely on national news alone. What many people may not consider is that many national news organizations have a biased tendency in their news coverage. Biased news coverage is not reporting about people and for people. It is reporting from an agenda and this is not how people should solely receive their news.
According to Joshua Darr, Matthew Hitt, and Johanna Dunaway in the research article Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior, local news organizations are disappearing because of changing technologies that “are disrupting traditional means of content distribution, advertising revenues, and inter media competition.” Darr, Hitt, and Dunaway, argue from their research that “the decline of local newspapers has contributed to the nationalization of American politics” and caused people to rely on national news to make political decisions.
Local news emphasizes people and their communities and stories. Another consequence of a society without local news is that we lose a sense of community as a society, something that humans were created for. According to Lauterer, community newspapers affirm “a positive and intimate reflection of the sense of place,” and local coverage affirms a “community’s identity and vision for itself.”
We all live in a community where we have built our lives. Our communities consist of many of the things and people that matter most to us. Local news highlights these things, so without it, we lose sight of what is most important, most relevant, and most impactful to our lives.
Considering how polarized our nation is today, it only makes sense to keep local news thriving. While I believe the media has certainly contributed this polarization, I am confident that local news can play a vital role in healing our divided nation. Local news unites communities, creates a sense of togetherness in a community, and keeps people in touch with what life is all about.
As an aspiring broadcast journalist, I value the the positive influence that local news has on communities and society as a whole. I believe that engaging a community through the internet and social media will be a crucial part of my responsibilities as a broadcast journalist. Communities will always need local news and it will be an honor one day to serve society in this way. However, local news organizations and journalists will need to keep up with the increasing influence of digital media to fulfill this need.
