Support your local newspaper
According to a survey by the Pew Charitable Trust, 75 percent of Americans think local newspapers like the one you’re reading now are doing just fine. 100 percent of those people are wrong.
Subscriptions are down just about everywhere. Annual subscription prices are nontrivial, and the implied commitment to sit down and read the entire paper is a non-trivial decision. And if you don’t care about sports, half of the paper is irrelevant except for when you wash your windows.
Local newspapers make most of their money from advertising. But all national chains and many local stores have a web page readers can easily find, where updating today’s special is a click away. And if customers subscribe to the website, they don’t even have to pick up a newspaper; they’ll get an email about a sale or a featured item. Advertising in print is less agile.
Most people these days get their news from the Internet — mainly from social media, although some folks subscribe to news services like MSNBC, ABC, Huffington Post, or others. I’d include Fox News in that list, but Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party, and Fox News lies. MSNBC and CNN strongly support the Democratic Party, but they don’t lie; they just include lots and lots of opinion. But what they all have in common is they report national news. Local news isn’t included.
So what would be your motivation for subscribing to the Porterville Recorder, or to any local newspaper? How about catching the bad guys red-handed? MSNBC isn’t going to tell you that your local school board members are idiots, or that your city councilmen are lining their pockets with kickbacks, or that your Congressman is a lying, self-serving jerk.
Good citizenship requires some effort. You need to inform yourself. You need to find out what’s happening in your community, and who’s doing what, and what’s right or wrong with what they’re doing. It wouldn’t kill you to attend a city council meeting from time to time, and it might be a real eye-opener. Or you could just read the paper.
Local papers tell stories about our neighbors, some of whom are having a rough time. We have students whose parents can’t afford a computer or other school supplies that are essential if we want our children to succeed. And no child should feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle. Why would their school make learning harder than it has to be? But sometimes they do. You can’t step in and correct the problem if you don’t know that it exists. Fox News isn’t going to tell you about palace intrigues at Monache or Granite Hills. That’s what the Recorder does for a living.
In one of my favorite movies, City Slickers, the three friends ask the old cowboy Curly for advice. “Only one thing is important,” he says. “What’s that?” one asks. “Whatever you decide is important.” Local papers inform us about what’s going on locally, and suggest what our priorities might be.
And if there’s a weekly columnist who’s a closet Communist, you can write hate mail to your local newspaper. Even Fox News won’t get involved in that little drama.
Local news deals with local polarization; it can combat low voter turnout; it can focus on local corruption; it can shine a light on government waste; and it can expose religious fundamentalists on the school board who want to brainwash your kids, in violation of the First Amendment. A well-informed citizenry is essential to solving local problems. CNN isn’t going to step in.
Considerable effort is beinåg expended to inform citizens of the importance of local news: The California News Publishers’ Association (http://cnpa.com), the Local Media Association (http://localmedia.org), the Knight Foundation (http://knightfoundation.org) and http:// Rebuildlocalnews.org are some of the organizations that work to support local papers.
One initiative in the works: HR 3940, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, introduced in 2021 by Representative Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona. If it passes, it will provide a tax credit of 80 percent of the first year’s subscription price to a local newspaper for personal use (up to $250), and a 50 percent tax credit thereafter. So whatever the paper is charging now, you’d pay 20 percent of that this year, and half of it thereafter. Write your local congressman.
If you understand the nature of this war and want to help, start by subscribing to your local newspaper. Then, use the information the local paper provides to get involved. All politics is local. Inform yourself and join the battle. We’ve never needed it more.
Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’s book, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com. Contact him at lespinter@ earthlink.