Member-only story
Local News, When The Sky Fell Down
Why I’ve made a deliberate effort to write for a local newspaper, and why those local news media outlets still matter
This is excerpted from the author’s Sunday SubStack feature News, Notes, and Notions.
One thing about my writing and media career is since I fell into it without meaning to, I missed a few steps most published writers and commentators take. Having mostly put words out online, and those words mostly dealing with broader, national issues, I didn’t really do the “work my way up” so much as jumped in the middle and learned to swim. So, I made a conscious effort to try and write more locally, and much more about my beloved West Virginia.
I’ve been very grateful to write for The Fayette Tribune, the local paper in Fayette County, WV and a subsidiary paper of The Register-Herald and CNHI newspapers. I won’t bore you with the current state of affairs for local newspapers, but anyone who has paid a lick of attention in the modern media age knows that local media — especially print media — has struggled to stay relevant in a digital world.
But local news is important. Folks will, rightly, point out that print newspapers are archaic. But they still serve a role, and the print edition, while lessening, is part of a healthy…
