Whether the news comes from the local journalist whose byline you read each week or the familiar anchor you see on local television each night, local news becomes part of the rhythm of a community. For many people, young and old alike, the day begins with the morning news and ends with the evening news.
There is familiarity in that relationship, but there is also trust. We come to recognize the names in the newspaper and the faces on television. When there is a storm, a fire, an election, a school closure, a court case or a tragedy, those are often the people we turn to to tell us what happened and what it means for the place we call home.
Local news is strongest when the people reporting it know that place. When they know the roads, the schools, the elected officials, the history, the families and the issues that have shaped a community for years. A reporter who lives in the region brings something to the story that cannot be duplicated from a distant office or created by an algorithm.
For years, those of us in the newspaper business have talked about shrinking newsrooms and growing news deserts. Here in southeastern Colorado, we have watched newspapers close, printing operations disappear and communities lose journalists who had documented them for generations.
Now local television appears to be traveling down a familiar road.
As reported elsewhere in this edition, the E.W. Scripps Company is eliminating hundreds of positions nationwide, including jobs at KKTV and KOAA in Colorado Springs, while restructuring its operations around consolidation, automation, artificial intelligence and a 24-hour streaming model.
There is an argument for some of what Scripps is doing. If two stations owned by the same company are sending two reporters to cover the same courthouse hearing, combining resources could allow another journalist to cover a story that otherwise would be missed.
But that only works if the journalists remain.
There is a difference between eliminating duplication and eliminating local presence. That is what concerns me most about where the media industry is heading.
Artificial intelligence does not have to replace the reporter standing in front of the camera to change a newsroom dramatically. Technology can automate work traditionally performed by producers, editors, directors and production staff. It can generate transcripts, organize material and repackage one piece of reporting for television, streaming, websites and social media.
That can make journalism more efficient. It can also make it possible to produce more content with fewer people. Those are not necessarily the same thing.
A 24-hour local streaming channel certainly sounds like more news. Maybe it will be. If technology allows reporters to spend less time on repetitive production work and more time attending meetings, investigating issues and talking with people, that could be a very good thing for journalism.
But a company can also fill 24 hours with weather, prerecorded stories, national reports, recycled packages and automated material while fewer journalists are actually walking through the communities being covered.
There can be more content on the screen while less original reporting takes place on the ground. That distinction matters.
We have spent years talking about news deserts as places where newspapers have disappeared. Perhaps we need to think about the term more broadly.
A community does not have to lose every newspaper or television signal to lose meaningful local coverage. Sometimes the outlet remains while the newsroom behind it slowly gets smaller. Sometimes the logo is still there, the website is still there and the newscast still comes on at the same time — but there are fewer people left who actually know the community.
That is a loss, even if it is harder to see.
Local journalism is not simply the method used to deliver information. It is the writer who knows there is more history behind a story than what appears in a press release. It is the reporter sitting through the school board meeting when almost nobody else is there. It is the investigative journalist asking where taxpayer money went. It is the photographer arriving at the fire. It is the sports writer who knows the players, families and rivalries. It is someone who remembers what an elected official said six months ago and recognizes when today’s answer has changed.
It is knowing who to call because years have been spent building relationships and trust.
And it is having journalists who are invested in what happens after the story is published because they still have to live, work and raise their families among the people they cover.
Artificial intelligence can organize information. It cannot replace those relationships. Automation can distribute a story. It cannot know a community. Streaming can deliver news around the clock, but it cannot create local journalism if there is no journalist there to gather it.
Newspapers have already felt the consequences of changing audiences, declining advertising, consolidation and shrinking staffs. Radio has felt them. Now television is facing many of the same pressures.
Technology itself is not the enemy. Losing the people who know our communities is. That is also why supporting independent local journalism matters.
Support the newspaper whose writers, journalists and photographers live among the people they cover. Support the locally owned publication that still sends someone to the school board meeting, courthouse, ballgame, city council meeting and scene when something goes wrong. Support the reporters who know that a five-line agenda item may have a much bigger story behind it because they know the history that came before it.
Support news organizations whose future depends on the communities they serve, not solely on decisions made in corporate offices hundreds or thousands of miles away.
When an independent local newspaper disappears, a community loses more than another source of content. It loses institutional memory. It loses another set of eyes watching local government, another person asking questions, another investigator following the paper trail and another independent voice deciding which stories deserve attention.
No community should have to depend entirely on distant corporations, government information offices, social media algorithms or automated systems to decide what its residents need to know.
Local journalism has to be local in more than name.
The people doing the reporting should know the communities they serve. They should know what matters there. They should understand that sometimes the most important story of the week will never trend online, but it still matters deeply to the people who live there.
So, subscribe to your local newsroom, radio station, newspaper. Advertise, read, share their work, and Support the people who are still showing up.
Because when something happens in our communities, someone still needs to be there.
Someone who knows the place. Someone who knows the people. Someone who knows the history. And someone willing to ask:
Is that really the whole story?
