I found this short article really interesting because it relates to last week’s reading on local news platforms across the United States and how they are making efforts to stay alive by merging with each other. The article emphasizes the importance of local news not for the sole survival of American journalistic tradition, but for the significant role it plays in politics. Since American political dialogue focuses heavily on state and local power, it is essential to have efficient and transparent forms of local news, which have the ability to examine, check and challenge the discourse of their hometowns.

         Last week’s reading talked about the merging practices that are being carried out in order to revitalize the world of local news in a hostile environment where many platforms are shutting down due to lack of audience/revenue. However, the results shown by these tactics will probably not achieve the final goal of returning the public’s attention to their local politicians because the news being shown on local channels are mass-produced by parent companies, which appears to be an effort to simply keep newspapers’ names alive rather than their niche content.         This article argues that rebuilding our local news ecosystem will also strengthen the public’s trust in the media, since it is easier to connect with journalists reporting on substantial local matters rather than banal stories created for entertainment. It is important to make local politics more public so that the population can base their support on transparent information

Article and photo: https://medium.com/@michaelshapiro_67828/to-save-our-democracy-we-need-to-save-local-news-4d38254405d7