National Newspaper Week: Embracing local journalism

October 5-11 is National Newspaper Week across the country, and the annual observance in our industry gives us a chance to reflect on our role in the communities we serve and the challenges faced by small town papers from coast to coast.

This year’s theme is Embracing Local Journalism for a Better Future, and it fits perfectly with what community newspapers view as their mission: telling the stories of the lives in their local community not being focused on national issues, though they pop up from time to time.

Here in Big Horn County, we take that mission seriously, and of all the myriad roles we believe community papers fill, perhaps the most important role in these fractured times is that of bringing people together.

During this anxious period in history when people appear to be willing to pull apart from each other and sever relationships over political beliefs, community newspapers are doing what they’ve always done: covering their community in a way that shows that we are more alike than we are different, be it a love for the local football team, caring for a person or family in need, supporting a downtown business district or celebrating local heroes.

Of course, our main job is informing our community and presenting stories that mean something right here, be it local school board decisions, town council work, land management issues or people making a difference in our lives.

We live in a world rife with a cavalcade of strident voices hammering away on social media, cable TV “news” programming that is closer to propaganda than news and the seemingly endless spewing of one-sided information flow on the internet in our us vs. them society, fed by computer algorithms to fan the flames.

Meanwhile, community newspapers are working every day to inform local citizens as fairly and evenly as they can, holding government accountable and supporting local businesses to strengthen the local economy.

And we do it in a way that binds the community together rather than tearing it asunder as happens with electronic media, doing so by telling stories that resonate with each and every one of us without force-fed indoctrination.

Of course, in order to keep fulfilling that valuable role in our community, we need your support of local journalism through subscriptions, advertising, news tips and reading our content. Only in this way can local journalism continue to thrive in the decades ahead and not be overwhelmed by corporate interests and national disinformation.

Please do your part so that the Lovell Chronicle can remain your community paper into the future. Read us and let us know what we can do to better cover our community. We value our partnership with our readers.