Loss of Local Journalism in the Age of Social Media🗞️

Beyond the brainrot, platforms like TikTok and Instagram now serve as essential news outlets for 39% of American youth.

Scrolling through social media, my feed quickly becomes a flurry of press coverage and breaking news of national importance. My friends can’t resist the urge to repost the latest executive order while the newspapers I follow endlessly analyze cabinet selections. Beyond the brainrot, platforms like TikTok and Instagram now serve as essential news outlets for 39% of American youth. Former President Joe Biden even announced his withdrawal from the U.S. Presidential election on X.

But for every national news story picked up by the algorithm, a local article falls through the cracks. Even as all my friends kept me in an eternal loop of reposts announcing the same national election results (seriously, I don’t need 50 people to tell me who won), they stayed silent as a local school board member was censured or a new mayor and city council was elected. Had it not been for the constant reminder when driving through downtown, I’d never even know that one of my hometown’s major bridges has been under construction for the past two years.

As social media connects people across countries and continents, we too often lose sight of our neighbors next door. Amidst an increasingly-national news cycle, we’ve wrongfully assumed that local coverage is either well-known or unimportant.

It’s not; and neither are the consequences.

Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have shut down across the U.S. In total, 16% of Americans now live in “news deserts” – areas where there is limited to no access to local news coverage. And when local papers do exist, they often republish the same national stories covered by AP or REUTERS.

Though there’s nothing wrong with knowing the intricate details of national politics, it cannot come at the expense of local and relevant coverage that affects you just as much. Even as a journalist myself, I’m not immune to the trap of national reporting. My coverage of the DNC gave me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the world of professional journalism from the front lines, though my stories and photojournalism severely lacked the local focus that typically defines (and should define) work at a high school newspaper. Truth is, nobody at my school or otherwise reading my stories cares about what national politicians think about the 2024 Presidential election, nor should they. If they do, their priorities placing national headlines over local news coverage are severely out of order.

But with local outlets pushed to the fringes by social media, basic principles of knowledge have been lost. For neighborhoods and communities, weather forecasts, traffic information, and other information foundational to true local news just cannot be found on social media – my hometown paper, the Naperville Sun, doesn’t even have an Instagram account – but that doesn’t make it any less significant. You should know more about your local Chief of Police than you do about Luigi Mangione or any other national criminal trial; you should know just as much about your mayor as your President. But with the loss of local news, these basic realities have become a thing of the past. Even pillars of local coverage – obituaries and wedding announcements that bring communities together – are no more in our digitized and divided world.

In an age where anyone with access to the internet can be a journalist, report local. Hopefully local coverage of the past can be a thing of the future as well.