So, there was a day we used to care about what happened at city council meetings, county commissioner meetings, state legislatures, police stations, fire stations, school boards. The doings of those bodies could change what happened to our homes, our taxes, our roads, our education, our libraries, our safety, our lives, what is more, everything that we thought of as “ours.”
The loss of local newspapers and reporters takes away our understanding of what we can expect from life. Instead, we are to rely on vagaries and rumors spread via the internet, some of it good; a lot of it, wrong or misleading.
Newspapers, at their best, were the real public servants, watch guards against the missteps of sometimes well-meaning public servants.
These days, most of the remaining local newspapers exist only for profit for their investors. We have monetized information, and we cast the blame on the internet as an easy out.
I don’t see the day when we will again hire more reporters and photographers to chronicle our government. And that, for me, is cause for grief.
Jessie Milligan
Myrtle Point, Ore.
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