I enjoy reading the local newspaper. There is something both special and relaxing about sitting at the kitchen table with the radio on, perusing through the headlines and different stories throughout the paper. It makes me feel old timey, like in taking this action I am honoring a timeless tradition. There is something inherently American about waking up to rolled up paper in a plastic bag on the front lawn.
My parents have had a subscription to the local newspaper for my whole life. I am soon to be moving on from living with them, and I haven't given much thought about whether or not I will be getting my own subscription to the local newspaper wherever I go.
It seems weird paying for the news. For my whole life, I have had the world at my finger tips without it costing me (i.e. "my parents") anything more than a cellphone and the cell phone's monthly bill. All this time, all I have had to do is google the news and click on the first article that comes up to get what I need. Who pays for the news? It is something that just happens and people report it.
While humorous, shades of this mindset can probably be found among many people my age. Throughout our childhoods we haven't had to weigh the important costs of producing the information we depend on.
The recent political climate in our country has forced me (and the rest of our society) to confront just how integral a free press is to the freedom of us as a people. The recent movie "The Post" provides a harrowing example of the risks that come when there is a chance that our press could be limited.
The cries of fake news from the current administration have drawn much attention to the the press; it is easy to fear for its future, but the national media is going strong. Last year the Washington Post passed 1 million digital subscriptions. CNN had its most ever watched 3rd quarter last year.
The bigger struggle appears to be at the local level, and it isn't one that is new. A recent article from "The Ringer" talked about the fight for local news, saying "local news, from investigations by city alt-weeklies to community reporting by small-town papers, has been in tumult for decades." The article ends by saying that the local news industry persists, but it is an uphill battle.
This struggle makes sense. The local news struggle has become easy to ignore because we live in a global and increasingly interconnected world. National and international headlines take precedence. It is hard to get worked up about parking decks when the whole government might get shutdown again in February.
Not only that, we have seemingly everything we need to know about the world right at our fingertips. The trendiest trends. The bageliest bagels. The newsiest news. That stuff likely won't go away, but the things we actually do need to know and could affect us - like what happens at a local city council - might disappear if we don't do our part to support it.
There is a good chance that the strongest threat to our press isn't the shouting of a jello-like president on top of Capitol Hill, but people like me. People who, due to free and easy access to the global stage, have been partially blinded to the importance of the things that go on in our communities.
The saying goes, "all politics are local". If that is the case, then what happens in our communities eventually filters all the way up to the top. If we don't do something as simple as buying our local newspapers then there is a good chance we risk losing accountability at the base level of our democracy.
It is time that I and others like me rethink the way we consume the news. For a long time we have just googled it and assumed it would be there, but the news that affects us the most, local news, is battling for its survival. Who knows whether it will there be in the future, but I do know I won't idly sit by a let that happen empty-handed. Instead, I will be idly sitting at the kitchen table, with a local newspaper.
