Look, I’m gonna be honest
I’ve been editing magazines for 22 years, and I’ve seen alot change. But nothing’s been as messy than this whole digital news thing. I remember back in 2008, when I was still in Boston, a colleague named Dave said to me over lunch at that little place on 5th, “Mark, this internet stuff is gonna change everything.” I laughed him off. I mean, who needs the internet when you’ve got a perfectly good newsstand?
Boy, was I wrong.
But here’s the thing…
Local news is dying. It’s not even a secret. I’ve seen it happen in Duxbury, in Austin, in every town I’ve worked in. Newspapers are closing, reporters are getting laid off, and the few that are left are stretched thinner than a high school kid’s lunch budget.
And don’t even get me started on the whole “citizen journalist” thing. I mean, look, I get it. Everyone’s got a camera phone now, and yeah, sometimes they capture some pretty important stuff. But let’s be real here. Most of the time, it’s just bad lighting and worse angles. You wanna know what happened at the city council meeting last Tuesday? Good luck finding out from some shaky video uploaded by a guy named “DuxburyDave69”.
No, thank you. I’ll take a real reporter any day. Someone who knows the difference between “its” and “it’s”. Someone who can write a sentence that doesn’t end in 20 exclamation points.
But here’s the other thing…
I’m not saying it’s all doom and gloom. There are some bright spots out there. Take my friend Marcus, for example. Let’s call him Marcus because, well, his mom’s reading this and I don’t need that hassle. Marcus runs a little hyperlocal news site in Duxbury. It’s not fancy, but it’s honest. He covers the school board meetings, the little league games, the stuff that nobody else cares about. And you know what? People read it. They share it. They care.
I asked him about it last week over coffee. “Marcus,” I said, “how do you do it? How do you make a living off this?” He just shrugged. “I don’t,” he said. “Not really. But I do it because someone’s gotta. And honestly, I like it.” Which… yeah. Fair enough.
But here’s the kicker. Marcus isn’t getting rich. He’s not even getting by. He’s got a day job, just like the rest of us. He does this because he believes in it. And that, my friends, is the real problem with local news today. It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that they can’t afford to.
So what’s the answer? I wish I knew. I really do. I’ve been thinking about it for years now, and honestly, I’m no closer to an answer than I was back in 2008 when Dave first warned me about this whole internet thing. Maybe it’s about finding new ways to fund local news. Maybe it’s about teaching people to care again. Maybe it’s about something else entirely.
I don’t know. But I do know this: we can’t keep going the way we’re going. We can’t keep letting local news die on the vine. Because one day, we’re gonna wake up and realize that nobody’s watching the store anymore. And by then, it’ll be too late.
So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna keep writing. I’m gonna keep editing. I’m gonna keep trying to make a difference, one word at a time. And I’m gonna keep reading latest news today headlines because, frankly, someone’s gotta.
And look, I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers. I’m just saying that we need to start asking the right questions. We need to start caring again. We need to start supporting the people who are out there, doing the hard work of keeping us informed.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what local news is all about. It’s not about big headlines or viral videos or whatever the hell it is that’s trending on Twitter today. It’s about the stuff that matters. The stuff that affects our lives, our communities, our futures.
And if we’re not careful, we’re gonna lose that. We’re gonna lose it all. And then where will we be?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to find out.
About the Author: Mark Johnson is a senior magazine editor with over 22 years of experience in the industry. He’s worked in Boston, Austin, and now calls Duxbury home. He’s a firm believer in the power of local news and is always looking for new ways to support it. When he’s not editing, you can find him complaining about the Patriots or trying to teach his kids the difference between “their”, “there”, and “they’re”.
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