Journalism is an important part of our society given its impact on the people who interact with it and give the words their power and influence. Those words are powerless without their handshake deal with the reader. Without that, the ideas given form fall into a void never empowered by the people. This void of ideas never has its chance to look back into the reader as the reader never looks in, creating a feedback loop of writing without reaction.
The role of journalism has been around for ages in our society and has been a critical point of engagement for many important ideas, particularly during the Industrial Revolution. The book “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, published in 1906, is a prime example of how important journalism is to the communities and the individuals around them. The book helped expose the unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry and led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Though Sinclair, one of many investigative journalists of the Progressive Era who earned the nickname “muckraker,” helped disseminate the truth, true change only occurred because of the interaction between the book and the people; without them, it would have fallen on deaf ears.
Local news tends to be different in nature compared to the confronting nature of Upton Sinclair. With that change in nature, local news tends to drift into a presence without confrontation and is often not talked about as much as national or global news within the community that the local news encompasses.
As news covers less and less area, people talk in the same proportion about their local news, which can hold some of the most relevant stories, from seemingly smaller reports on events like road closures to comprehensive exposés on local corruption. The news provided at a local level often provides extremely relevant information but is often overlooked due to different factors like lack of personal engagement or lack of division. The point compounds at a school level, where many students at Brighton High School do not know of its school newspaper and makes those ideas written almost null.
Let it be known that of the ideas worth sharing and talking about around us every day, no matter how elegant the idea or world-changing in its form, no one will know if it goes unnoticed. The question, however, is will this same piece fall into the void, or will this be seen by the very person who just might need to see it?
