Making the case for local professional journalism
One of the reasons we joined The Sheridan Press Editorial Advisory board is because we believe that local journalism is the heartbeat of healthy communities.
Professional, local journalism is important to the life of communities. It is a public good, like good roads and clean water. It is more than just reporting, it is a glue that keeps communities connected because it shares experiences and issues that affect the communities. It reports on births, deaths and little league baseball scores.
Without local news sources, our democratic republic is compromised. Coverage of local governing bodies such as county commission, city council and school boards help shine the light on governing. Local coverage is a check on power and finances.
It takes resources to attend meetings, conduct serious investigative journalism and report the news in a professional manner. For The Sheridan Press, that means an eight-member newsroom. We need to support local media through subscriptions, donations and our input. The Sheridan Press’ subscribers total around 3,000 compared to 13,515 households in Sheridan County.
We need to advocate for policies — like requiring legal notices to be published in a newspaper of record — that protect local journalism and demand local issues are covered. As always, we need to demand that news sources provide impartial news. We must guard against media elimination, as we’ve seen this week with the closing of eight print newspapers in Wyoming.
We are very fortunate to have the local newspaper and news sources that we do. It is in our communities’ best interest that we retain these local news sources.
The Sheridan Press Editorial Advisory Board consists of The Sheridan Press leadership and four at-large community members — Peter Clark, Peter Davis, Kris Korfonta, Dennis Fox and Margaret MaGee — who bring diverse perspectives from the Sheridan County community. Each member contributes story ideas, content reviews, and other editorial advice and feedback.