Pop Quiz Time: Can you name anyone on your city council?

Unless that person is either yourself, your relative, or your friend, then I doubt it. And it’s not entirely your fault.

I’m not a journalist. I want to be a science communicator, and for fun, I blog about stupid stuff like ACOTAR and Robot Chicken, but that doesn’t make me a journalist. We have a few similar interests, though. For example, I’m very passionate about media literacy, which could be described as “how to know if the media you’re consuming is bullsh*tting you.” I care about politics because political ambivalence is a luxury. I like to know where my taxes are going and whether my elected officials are doing their job. I would also like to know if my country is on the verge of electing a convicted felon or its first woman president—all of these things I have in common with journalists.

The current state of local news is bleak. For the last, oh, let’s say, 30 or so years, local newspapers have lost their main sources of funding and are shutting down. Occasionally, some other outlet will pop up in its place, but only sometimes.

Humans deserve to have access to fair, balanced, and accurate information. Without that information, self-governance becomes infinitely more challenging. When we can’t self-govern, other people will make the decisions for us, and we may not be happy about that.

Once upon a time, local newspapers were essential to every community. They covered issues like what was happening in city government, the school board, and new businesses and buildings popping up. They made most of their money via Ad Revenue because printing costs money, and journalists need to be paid for their work. But then a little thing called the Internet started up, which began to siphon away most of that ad revenue. Without revenue, newspapers, which are businesses, are forced to make cost-cutting decisions, like laying off employees. This also impacts their ability to do actual journalism, like deep-dives into interesting stories and broad coverage of whatever is happening in that community. That stuff has to be sacrificed because there’s no money to support it. And then the people who may have relied on that newspaper, consciously or otherwise, no longer have access to that compiled information.

It becomes much more difficult to have a conversation about your community when you don’t know what’s going on there.

Please note: I’m not advocating for the return of daily, printed newspapers from every outlet. I’m nostalgic but not unreasonable. Printing newspapers is expensive, cumbersome to deliver, and not fantastic for the environment, so I’m fine with the shift to digital. But I do think that these local news sources need to be supported so that they can continue doing what they’re doing.

If the only person who’s been running for city council has managed to win every election cycle due to low voter turnout and a lack of competition, then that should be reported. If a suspicious amount of money is being filtered from the budget to an account called “Reserve Sewage Capital Development Account,” that could be a sign of embezzlement, which could be caught sooner if someone had eyes on government spending. If a local business or factory is dumping its waste into a public body of water, that should be reported because it’s illegal (and disgusting). If a hideous (or grossly religious) art installation is being placed in front of a public building, that’s something you’ll want to know about because you’ll have to look at it all the time.

If you live in a big city like Seattle or Phoenix, chances are there is more than one newspaper to choose from, and you may wonder what I’m even complaining about. But if you’re from a smaller city or town, it’s entirely possible you may be living in a news desert.

The closest your town might have to a news source is a local Facebook page, which isn’t bad, but isn’t quite the same as having journalists report on the community. An essential part of journalism is going out into the community, asking questions to the people living there, and then accurately and fairly reporting that for the knowledge of all. Journalists are people who are trained to gather information, fact-check and report on local events, and ask questions so that regular people reading their work can have easy, digestible access to that information. It’s not a job that just any person can do.

You may be concerned about possible political bias, and yes, that’s a risk you have to accept with journalism. Journalists are people, and people are prone to have opinions and make mistakes. As much as I would love it if journalists could switch off their emotions like the characters in Equilibrium, current pharmaceuticals aren’t quite there yet. And frankly, AI is too stupid and too unethical for journalism purposes, so the dream of Journalism-Bot still has a way to go.

My understanding of good journalism is that it should be as free from bias as possible. And it’s possible that the local news you engage with will feel much less biased than a piece written by someone at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

It’s also possible that some news sources are not completely legitimate. That’s why media literacy matters, and why you should double-check that the information you’re reading is from a good source, and not say, the Weekly World News. Or the Epoch Times.

As local newspapers continue to struggle to stay afloat, they are more likely to be consumed by larger news and media outlets. And those larger outlets do not have a vested interest in your community the way a smaller, specific outlet would.

It sounds obvious when I say it out loud, but some people don’t seem to understand the importance of knowing what’s going on in your community. And you should, for a simple reason: YOU LIVE IN YOUR COMMUNITY. You are a part of a community, whether you want to be or not. You could try and create an underground bunker to escape all of humanity, but if your city changes its zoning laws and you’re unaware of those changes, who’s to say you won’t risk your secret underground bunker getting discovered?

Unfortunately, unless you plan on living in the (ever-decreasing) woods like an animal, you cannot escape society. So you might as well be informed about it, and you can help decide how your little corner of society will look.

Some local newspapers have become nonprofits, which is one way to provide news to a community. I’m not the biggest fan of nonprofits, mostly because I think nonprofits often use their status as an excuse to underpay their employees. Journalism is already a career notorious for terrible pay, so slapping the “nonprofit” label onto it seems like an additional excuse to pay someone below market rate.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with how local journalism works, you may wonder why the government doesn’t do more to step in and help these publications. There’s been increased discussion about the government’s role in supporting journalism. In California, a bill was recently passed that would tax tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon (who are somewhat responsible for local newspapers’ loss of ad revenue), and that money would be funneled into propping up local news outlets. Although, as the role of a newspaper is to keep public officials accountable as much as it is to keep citizens informed, some journalists have complex feelings about governmental support for newspapers.

The problem of disappearing local news isn’t going to be solved in a day, but it is something that’s worth looking into and working to preserve. Supporting your local newspaper is a surefire way to stay involved in your community and to be aware of issues that will directly impact your day-to-day life. And this support pays impressive dividends by making us more aware of what’s happening around us and more involved in community decision-making.

So if you have a solution for how we can save local journalism, go ahead and drop it in the comments. Maybe even mention your local newspaper. And if you’re the kind of person who avoids news because it “bums you out,” then let me know, and we can unpack that in another post.