Local News, junk food for brain?

You explained the situation so well when you mentioned "our freedoms." Dictators in the past have solidified power, and controlled content. This time around its the economy that's silencing media outlets. We're left with google-ized content, bloggers, and gossips. In my 35 years in journalism I've yet to meet a reporter on the street from google.

Your suggestion of reporting more local news has caught on, and is evident in hyper-local web sites like "The Voice of San Diego. However I love holding a real paper in my hands, and that's where a 3 time per week publication could gain ground. The publications could focus on investigative stories, and things people should be concerned about.

Finally, the dinosaurs of this world (myself included) can put their head together, and come up with new business models much like the one you proposed. Thanks.

As a former editor/reporter for print publications, like many, I have great concern about the decline of daily newspapers.

There are many people who still read newspapers who are not computer literate or tuned into electronic devices.

When their newspaper is gone, they can still get the day’s major headlines on TV but where will they get the meat-and-potatoes behind those headlines? It’s all in the details and that’s what newspaper reporters have provided all these many years.

I’d like to suggest that newspapers repackage themselves to shine a laser focus on LOCAL news. Publish two or three times a week with a reader-friendly, tabloid-size publication that will focus on people where they live -- what’s going on with their neighborhoods, schools, community groups and organizations, businesses, local kids, senior citizens etc.

The world has changed, but folks still love to see their names -- and their kids’ names -- in print, and they’ll buy extra copies too. And what about obituaries? Isn’t everyone entitled to those few paragraphs that summarize their lives and let the community know about their services and final wishes?

LOCAL news is where the heartbeat and personality of a city can be found, and I believe advertisers and readers will follow papers that report that news. In our high-tech world, there is still interest in what’s going on down the street.

Let’s face it. Getting a stop sign installed on your corner or having a series of burglaries in your neighborhood is way more important to most people than many of the decisions public officials deliberate about every day.

Yes, these papers could, and should, also do some in-depth and investigative articles.

My other concern goes to our freedoms. How many dictators in history seized and solidified power by silencing or controlling newspapers? How reliable are some of the voices on TV and online that portray themselves as “journalists” these days? What are their credentials and training for reporting news in an objective fashion?

One of the best lessons I learned from a professor in journalism school was that misspelling a person’s name in a news story got you an automatic F on your assignment. A silly rule, perhaps, but it goes to the importance of accuracy in reporting the news.

Who is going to hold the bloggers,commentators and social media types to that standard of reporting?

I may be a dinosaur, but I think that before we throw our newspapers into the permanent recycling bin, we need to first take a hard look at remaking them to survive, and inform, in the Twitterⁱ age.