My Turn – Oct. 9

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Did you notice something different about your newspaper today? The space above is intentionally blank to ask our readers to think about this question: What if your local newspaper suddenly disappeared?
This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. Since 2005, nearly 3,000 local newspapers have closed across the United States, resulting in the loss of over 43,000 journalism jobs. These numbers paint a grim picture of what communities could face without their trusted, local news outlets: a lack of information (or worse, social media gossip), less government accountability, and a loss of community identity. Local newspapers have served as the cornerstone of towns and cities for decades—sometimes for over a century—documenting everything from major community events to personal milestones like births, obituaries, and accomplishments, and feature stories about your neighbors—the real people you know, not influencers or strangers miles away.
Newspapers are the living, breathing history of your community, updated weekly, and preserved in a way that won’t be erased when a server crashes or a social media site goes dark. Other than talking to someone who actually lived through a community event, newspapers are the best way to connect with your community’s history.
Local newspapers are accessible to anyone, regardless of technological access or digital literacy. The news is right there, in print, in your hands.
You don’t need to Google search or scroll through dozens of pages of online search results. This is especially true for all types of public notices, like election ballots, constitutional amendments, bid solicitations and court-related notices. After all, if you don’t know about them, why would you go to an obscure government website to look for them? In a newspaper, they’re right in front of you.
Digital news comes with many drawbacks. The rise of social media platforms and online news has changed how people consume information.
Algorithms decide what you’ll see based on your clicks, likes, or shares, not on what’s most relevant or essential to your community. As a result, you might miss crucial local updates simply because they didn’t generate enough engagement online.
Another serious problem is that by relying on these algorithms, readers can fall victim an “echo chamber” effect, where they are only served stories that match their existing views.
People crave human connection, not another algorithm telling them what to think.