Why it's more important than ever to read local news (Part 5)

We all had (or should have had) a Civics or Government class in middle or high school. Among the things Civics taught us was to find out about how our government works at every level (including school districts).?

The best way to keep up with each of those governmental levels is to be a good consumer of local news. Water and sewer rate increases, property tax increases and local school bond referenda are all among those issues.

Newspapers need to do a better job of making it easier to consume and understand that issue-driven local news with graphics, lists, charts and more.?

But they also have to avoid printing large, multi-part regional stories that have very little to do with local markets. Nothing turns off readers more than a lengthy multi-part piece on inflation throughout the United States when it’s the main story on local news pages every week.

Gannett experienced some of this blowback a few years ago when it mandated world news content be placed inside its papers. Sales representatives and news executive groused because they were losing local news hole that both could use to reach readers.

Another way newspapers can more vitally reflect their communities is to bring back the Opinion page with local editorials. There are many readers of my former newspaper who bemoaned the departure of an opinion page — complete with local editorials, syndicated columnists and cartoons — since my retirement.?

I've heard from even more people who praised the local paper for its local news coverage, editorials, letters to the editor and more. And I've even heard from a local government official who reminds government leaders that having a local newspaper is a valuable asset to the community.

For years, I read newspapers from other states as a judge evaluating them for awards in their state’s newspaper association’s better newspaper contests. And almost every year, I wrote comments critical of their so-called Opinion page entries because frequently those pages would contain little more than a syndicated cartoon, a personal column from a newspaper employee and a local cooking column.?

The argument for years from so-called enlightened newspaper leaders: Why put a page in your paper without advertising that’s going to anger half (or more) of your readership?

Because local opinion pages with local editorials can also inform. During my three-plus decades in the newspaper business, I wrote dozens of editorials encouraging participation in local blood drives, school district annual meetings, civic or non-profit organizational fund raisers, food drives and more.

But there were also editorials taking positions on local school district referenda, controversial development scenarios, proposals before the city council and more. I could fill a book of the responses received from some of those editorials — but the point is, they generated responses from our readers.

Why? People are interested in those issues — probably because they are on one side of the issue or the other.?

Remember readers with any length of memory will respect the newspaper because it just printed the editorial trying to get people to participate at the local blood drive, or donate to the silent auction at the athletic team’s annual fund raiser, etc.?

It’s better for local news consumers to learn about those important local issues from newspapers than from a Facebook page whose readers may not know the entire story and express their opinions in the same proportion.?

In other words, local newspapers want to be the authority on local issues worth talking about.?

Remember this: Reading local newspapers from cover to cover (including the legal notices) is one way to ensure an actively involved citizenry. But so does reading newsletters from your school district and municipality to find out when the next electronics recycling event or school community event is taking place.

In this conclusion of the series, please remember that some of these ideas to improve local news readership are probably too little, too late.?

Some of them will never be explored because some companies in charge of local newspapers think they are being pennywise when instead they are being pound foolish.

All of these ideas, however, won’t work — unless local readers take the time to read local news.

The author worked as managing editor for the Sun Prairie (WI) Star for 33-plus years until 2023, and currently works as a freelance writer for the Middleton Times-Tribune. He currently is the Chief Innovation Officer for his company, 608 Beacon Enterprises LLC; learn more online at www.608beaconenterprisesllc.com.