I started my career as a journalist at a small daily paper before moving into tech in the 1990s. As a young reporter - still in college - I got horrible assignments like having to attend local budget meetings, going down to the police station to copy the blotter, sitting in on school board meetings, updating the local calendar and reporting on the high school sports teams, among other tasks. This stuff was boring, tedious and rarely ever generated "news" of anything beyond an informational synopses of the goings on around town.
It didn't matter - the paper was picked up and read daily by thousands of readers. Many read it cover to cover. It's truly an important service to any community. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all. Newspapers traditionally bring people together and provide a sense of belonging and regional awareness and even pride.
This stuff isn't sexy, nor particularly profitable, but it has to be done! Someone needs to keep track of these events, summarize and disseminate this information. Even the most boring, mundane happenings need to be recorded and publicized for well-functioning society. Without that effort, the things happening around us become opaque, and being informed relies literally on word of mouth.
Sadly, pretty much every effort to digitally replicate the services provided by local papers has failed to my knowledge. As a result, I know more about what's happening in London than I do about my home city.
No idea what the solution is, and a lot of people much smarter than myself have tried for years. But what I do know is the long term consequences of small newspapers closing is a lot more dire than I think most people realize.
> In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.
As a young (21yr) person in my community, I have to say I have never read through a full local newspaper and don't know a single friend my age or younger who has. The local news channels have websites these days and I would say those, in combination with local public radio, television channels, and even social media are the main source for local news in my town (for my demographic at least).
I personally don't feel a lack of community due to the fact that this news comes from my computer monitor instead of ink on some rolled up paper, but then again I never really lived in an era when I got to experience that.
I know I'm kind of dreaming here, but I think this would be a cool application for ActivityPub / Fediverse. Every town gets an instance with some official accounts (govt, school board, etc) and a dedicated reporting staff to gather tidbits to publish. Because of federation I could follow the news of other places I care about but my identity would be on my own city's instance.
> In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.
And that’d be silly. Communities existed long before newspapers, and they exist for nnplaces too small to support their own newspapers now. And even communities that would have had a newspaper a couple decades ago make do with, e.g., one or mor Facebook groups today, with the boring bits you refer to informally crowdsourced.
This is also one of the largest issues with EU politics and elections right now – there’s few EU-wide media, as result, there’s little EU-wide debates, and no real community.
I think what you describe used to be true. I think that as the boomers die off, local papers will have almost 0 readers. It is a time and era that is dying off at least in the US. Most of this local journalism now is barely more than a tweet even though it is an "article" online. No facts, no research, little more than a headline.
In the US, the papers won't totally go away because certain things must (by law) be reported in a public data source. I think the thing that the journalism totally missed the boat on was being the source for local entertainment. People always want to know what fun things they can do this week/end with their kids and friends. Having local knowledge is something the Yelps of the world will never be able to do right.
> In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all.
In the US, it was the churches that made an area a community not the newspapers. As the churches have faded nothing has replaced them. Newspapers supplemented what was discussed informally in gatherings.
Frankly, local newspapers that didn’t remember that they served locals and either tried to preach or kept republishing national news outlets when it became obvious national news was available elsewhere doomed themselves.
The future is probably an AI aggregator that takes meeting minutes and summarizes them. Then every public event / happening gets posted to Facebook. The one journalist turns into the content creators themselves themselves. Maybe someone like Facebook could geofence sites and aggregate them into something like My Town.
>I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all
I would say the opposite. If members of a community aren't aware of the goings on, they don't have that 'regional awareness', it's not much of a community. A daily newspaper is only needed if people aren't informed. Daily is too often for the news to simply be a supplement for word-of-mouth that is the medium of a genuine community.
this must only really work in small communities as most larger cities are pretty much immune to monitoring except corruption.
anecdotal, in Atlanta we tend to see the local TV news doing a lot of investigation with one partnered with the local paper (AJC). They tend to focus on corruption more than costs of city programs. However the one expense they never ever will touch is how cities are getting buried by pension costs to where even the pension systems are threatened. (Chicago's system will be out of money by 2021) too rich of benefits and more retirees than active is to much of a burden
> "Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model," says Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."
-- David Simon (Creator of The Wire) on the necessity of local newspapers which are quickly disappearing.
News is no longer what a local paper publishes. It's the latest Instagram story from your friends. It's the Facebook post from a local school informing parents of a PTA meeting. It's the Twitter status update from the President. It's a Reddit post discussing problems with the latest MacBook keyboards.
Why is the newspaper dying? Because updates about what is happening in people's world is no longer constrained by what is published in the local paper! And everyone involved in the old industry still can't wrap their minds around it.
The newspaper was a medium for communication. The World Wide Web is a medium for communication. News didn't die, but what constitutes news is no longer defined by what the local paper decides to publish.
The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news. They did a fantastic job (in most cases) of making sure they had their facts straight, and local news broke most of the big stories you eventually heard about on national news sources. Even today, a LOT of the national news starts at local news sources, either papers or local channels, but that is getting worse all the time due to the cuts.
Instead, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. you get a flood of "news", but you have to vet it all yourself to see what is true and what isn't. And many many people don't do that - if they trust the person sharing, they trust the "news". Or if it agrees with their world view, they trust the "news". Sometimes amazing things are covered - live Reddit threads have broken some amazing stories, with details from local residents. Same with Twitter, etc. But for every one of those stories there are 100s that are fake, or actually pushing alternative narratives that are not based in reality for their own ends. And that flood is just too much for the average person to actually separate the fact from the fiction.
Social media does not equal journalism. That isn't "old industry" thinking. That is just a sad fact.
In my town, there's still a local paper, and they send out that one person, who is reasonably neutral, to report on what happens during, say, city council meetings. Without that person, you just have what the councilors say, what Angry Neighbors report (the parking! won't someone think of the parking!), or maybe a long, long, tedious recording that no sane person can sit through to make heads or tails of what happened.
That's super important stuff and has a lot more impact on my life than many things in DC.
From the article:
> Susan's a Daily Camera subscriber, but she mentions Boulder's local paper recently raised the subscription price by 25%.
This is, in part, a result of tariffs by the Trump administration:
At least, I like to think I was neutral in my writing. There were two political cliques, and one of them occasionally behaved in incredibly jerkish ways (And would regularly have between 0 and 40% of the council seats).
Sweden had the same problem of local newspapers shutting down in the 50's and 60's, and introduced a system of press support where the government directly subsidizes newspapers to keep competition available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support
==Less than a third of U.S. newspapers assign any kind of reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, only 30% of the 801 daily papers it monitor send a staffer to the statehouse for any period of time. In Massachusetts, whose capital is the largest city (Boston), just 6% of the state’s newspapers have any reporting presence at the statehouse—the lowest percentage of newspaper representation of any state.==
A number of comments here are along the lines of "I'm more informed today than I was before the web, no problem here."
You're probably more informed on the whole, but there are fewer and fewer eyes watching our elected officials and shining lights into dark places.
A strong and free press is critical in maintaining a healthy democracy. Support your local papers or hyperlocal bloggers if you see them doing good work - you and your community will benefit in the long term.
In my town both the major newspapers are owned by one company. That one company also laid off a lot of reporting staff and saved money by using syndicated content in both papers.
It's sad to see how less diverse the opinions are. We are just being told what to think now.
> But nationwide, there's been no mass replacement of local newspapers. Non-profit online sites are largely based in major metro areas.
Is this really true? I've heard of at least a couple of non-profit newspapers opening in small towns including the one I'm from, and I don't really pay that close of attention to this stuff. For enterprising journalists there are a lot of people willing to pay/donate to these causes. Optimistically, the funding can move from ad/subscription more to donations/grants and the local reporting can continue.
It is very true. And a journalist can’t do the job of being a journalist if they have to spend hours in city council meetings in addition to wooing subscribers. This business is tough.
Facebook and Google are outliers. Your average website (if there is such a thing anymore) with 10.000 - 100.000 aren't thriving on ads, they struggle to survive as well, at least the for profit sites.
GoogleFB thrive on ads because they violate privacy. Say I am from Springfield. Normally, the newspaper would show the ads for Springfield businesses. Now Google shows the ads for Springfield businesses on Candy Crush Saga. The same effect happens to specialty, niche publications. I am running a medical technologies site aimed at doctors for 15 years, and we can barely stay afloat. Google violates privacy and thrives on ads, but people that actually create the content are suffering. I call it the Google's War on Journalism.
PS To be sure, Google learned that our readers are doctors from our site and related sites. Now, Google shows them doctor-related ads on Candy Crush Saga. How's that for fairness?!
Facebook and Google have the eyeballs, so their ad space is perceived to be valuable. Newspapers... don't. In the Boston area, the Herald just went under this year, and apparently the Globe has less than a million daily readers. And the Globe is a major, flagship paper. But, as with the Globe's ownership's other major concern (The Red Sox), they're catering to a graying, aging, dying audience.
The biggest loss to newspapers imo is the fact that they got just 1 chance every day to publish their articles.
It was harder to spy on what the other was doing, unless you wanted to be a day behind them. This allowed people to come up with more original opinions, and less hivemind behavior that you see with the constantly updating/mutating articles online.
There may be hope for automating the dissemination of local and state government information and news when agencies use services like opengov.com. The problem is still getting this information to venues people will notice and pay attention to. This will still probably come down to social media. In many ways social media is taking the place of local newspapers.
If taxi drivers were in the same way connected to social studies people as journos are, we would be reading laments about oldschool taxi services as a cornerstone of society now.
Because reporting involves more than just a cellphone video. It involves understanding and reporting of the context, and not just local context either.
I wrote an extensive comment as to why I consider the capitalist funding model for news to be suboptimal and not resilient in the face of the Internet. I described an alternative in terms of collaborative efforts like wikinews, user-submitted content, and fact checking and analysis as a community effort. It tried to be as detailed and helpful as possible in a reasonable space.
It was downvoted (fine) and then flagged and killed. Also replies to it that agreed with it were flagged even more and killed.
My question is - why was it flagged? Can anyone explain? Is it because it suggested a non-capitalist approach to news? Or because it made a broader point? I really think the “flag” feature should require an explanation.
My town had a local newspaper for a while which went away. Now I have basically no source of information about local planning, zoning, etc. board meetings. I suppose I could more regularly attend town meetings and so forth but that often isn't really an option.
[+] [-] russellbeattie|7 years ago|reply
It didn't matter - the paper was picked up and read daily by thousands of readers. Many read it cover to cover. It's truly an important service to any community. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without a local newspaper an area isn't a community at all. Newspapers traditionally bring people together and provide a sense of belonging and regional awareness and even pride.
This stuff isn't sexy, nor particularly profitable, but it has to be done! Someone needs to keep track of these events, summarize and disseminate this information. Even the most boring, mundane happenings need to be recorded and publicized for well-functioning society. Without that effort, the things happening around us become opaque, and being informed relies literally on word of mouth.
Sadly, pretty much every effort to digitally replicate the services provided by local papers has failed to my knowledge. As a result, I know more about what's happening in London than I do about my home city.
No idea what the solution is, and a lot of people much smarter than myself have tried for years. But what I do know is the long term consequences of small newspapers closing is a lot more dire than I think most people realize.
[+] [-] willio58|7 years ago|reply
As a young (21yr) person in my community, I have to say I have never read through a full local newspaper and don't know a single friend my age or younger who has. The local news channels have websites these days and I would say those, in combination with local public radio, television channels, and even social media are the main source for local news in my town (for my demographic at least).
I personally don't feel a lack of community due to the fact that this news comes from my computer monitor instead of ink on some rolled up paper, but then again I never really lived in an era when I got to experience that.
[+] [-] grahamburger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
And that’d be silly. Communities existed long before newspapers, and they exist for nnplaces too small to support their own newspapers now. And even communities that would have had a newspaper a couple decades ago make do with, e.g., one or mor Facebook groups today, with the boring bits you refer to informally crowdsourced.
[+] [-] kuschku|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarf21|7 years ago|reply
In the US, the papers won't totally go away because certain things must (by law) be reported in a public data source. I think the thing that the journalism totally missed the boat on was being the source for local entertainment. People always want to know what fun things they can do this week/end with their kids and friends. Having local knowledge is something the Yelps of the world will never be able to do right.
[+] [-] protomyth|7 years ago|reply
In the US, it was the churches that made an area a community not the newspapers. As the churches have faded nothing has replaced them. Newspapers supplemented what was discussed informally in gatherings.
Frankly, local newspapers that didn’t remember that they served locals and either tried to preach or kept republishing national news outlets when it became obvious national news was available elsewhere doomed themselves.
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2038AD|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corysama|7 years ago|reply
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280712
https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance-loc...
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...
[+] [-] Shivetya|7 years ago|reply
anecdotal, in Atlanta we tend to see the local TV news doing a lot of investigation with one partnered with the local paper (AJC). They tend to focus on corruption more than costs of city programs. However the one expense they never ever will touch is how cities are getting buried by pension costs to where even the pension systems are threatened. (Chicago's system will be out of money by 2021) too rich of benefits and more retirees than active is to much of a burden
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alienreborn|7 years ago|reply
-- David Simon (Creator of The Wire) on the necessity of local newspapers which are quickly disappearing.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/27/david-simon-wi...
[+] [-] simplecomplex|7 years ago|reply
Why is the newspaper dying? Because updates about what is happening in people's world is no longer constrained by what is published in the local paper! And everyone involved in the old industry still can't wrap their minds around it.
The newspaper was a medium for communication. The World Wide Web is a medium for communication. News didn't die, but what constitutes news is no longer defined by what the local paper decides to publish.
[+] [-] LocalPCGuy|7 years ago|reply
Instead, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. you get a flood of "news", but you have to vet it all yourself to see what is true and what isn't. And many many people don't do that - if they trust the person sharing, they trust the "news". Or if it agrees with their world view, they trust the "news". Sometimes amazing things are covered - live Reddit threads have broken some amazing stories, with details from local residents. Same with Twitter, etc. But for every one of those stories there are 100s that are fake, or actually pushing alternative narratives that are not based in reality for their own ends. And that flood is just too much for the average person to actually separate the fact from the fiction.
Social media does not equal journalism. That isn't "old industry" thinking. That is just a sad fact.
[+] [-] davidw|7 years ago|reply
That's super important stuff and has a lot more impact on my life than many things in DC.
From the article:
> Susan's a Daily Camera subscriber, but she mentions Boulder's local paper recently raised the subscription price by 25%.
This is, in part, a result of tariffs by the Trump administration:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-publishers-worry-ab...
[+] [-] vkou|7 years ago|reply
At least, I like to think I was neutral in my writing. There were two political cliques, and one of them occasionally behaved in incredibly jerkish ways (And would regularly have between 0 and 40% of the council seats).
[+] [-] lurquer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moorhosj|7 years ago|reply
http://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting-state...
==Less than a third of U.S. newspapers assign any kind of reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, only 30% of the 801 daily papers it monitor send a staffer to the statehouse for any period of time. In Massachusetts, whose capital is the largest city (Boston), just 6% of the state’s newspapers have any reporting presence at the statehouse—the lowest percentage of newspaper representation of any state.==
[+] [-] katzgrau|7 years ago|reply
You're probably more informed on the whole, but there are fewer and fewer eyes watching our elected officials and shining lights into dark places.
A strong and free press is critical in maintaining a healthy democracy. Support your local papers or hyperlocal bloggers if you see them doing good work - you and your community will benefit in the long term.
[+] [-] msie|7 years ago|reply
It's sad to see how less diverse the opinions are. We are just being told what to think now.
[+] [-] Accioni|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahdum|7 years ago|reply
I didn't see any other years compared to see if that kind of variance is typical.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/10584609.2012...
[+] [-] shoguning|7 years ago|reply
Is this really true? I've heard of at least a couple of non-profit newspapers opening in small towns including the one I'm from, and I don't really pay that close of attention to this stuff. For enterprising journalists there are a lot of people willing to pay/donate to these causes. Optimistically, the funding can move from ad/subscription more to donations/grants and the local reporting can continue.
[+] [-] exotree|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mudil|7 years ago|reply
PS To be sure, Google learned that our readers are doctors from our site and related sites. Now, Google shows them doctor-related ads on Candy Crush Saga. How's that for fairness?!
[+] [-] megaman22|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramblerman|7 years ago|reply
It was harder to spy on what the other was doing, unless you wanted to be a day behind them. This allowed people to come up with more original opinions, and less hivemind behavior that you see with the constantly updating/mutating articles online.
[+] [-] jackfoxy|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] EGreg|7 years ago|reply
It was downvoted (fine) and then flagged and killed. Also replies to it that agreed with it were flagged even more and killed.
My question is - why was it flagged? Can anyone explain? Is it because it suggested a non-capitalist approach to news? Or because it made a broader point? I really think the “flag” feature should require an explanation.
[+] [-] 1996|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|7 years ago|reply
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