When my family and I moved here in the 1970’s, the home town paper, The Chapel Hill News, introduced us to town leaders, the local personalities, and the history of our new community. In more recent years, when publication was reduced to only twice a week and many new sources of information proliferated online, the Chapel Hill News editorial page continued to perform the valuable service of providing a forum for residents to engage in reasoned debate about issues of local concern. Letters to the editor abounded and citizens could read about many perspectives on an issue, form their own opinions, and engage thoughtfully. As a result we had a fairly well informed citizenry.
Now, in August 2017, the Chapel Hill Newspaper is a mere shell of its former self. It contains recipes and a few ads, but no longer features local articles or letters to the editor. For news about our town, we can look instead to the reconfigured Durham Herald-Sun, now called simply the Herald-Sun.
We would have liked to see the Chapel Hill News continue as an autonomous publication and we still believe there is a need for a local paper. But local businesses have deserted printed papers and the old business model no longer works. If you have ideas about how to make local journalism economically viable in this brave new media world, please share your thoughts. We still need more community dialogue!
Where will we find local news?
We’ve appealed to Jeffrey Billman, editor of the Independent, for ways to increase Orange County coverage.
Meanwhile, Mark Schultz, the new editor of the Herald-Sun, formally editor of the Chapel Hill News, says that in his new position he will be able to increase coverage of Chapel Hill and Orange County news in the Herald-Sun because he now has more resources than he had as Chapel Hill News editor.
According to Schultz, about 20 percent of Herald-Sun print readers live in Orange County, most of them in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. An increasing percentage are online readers. Tammy Grubb and Elizabeth Friend will continue to report from Chapel Hill and Carrboro, respectively. Readers are following local stories with letters, online comments and posts on Mark Schultz’s Facebook page, where he links to the paper’s stories. Here is Mark’s advice on how to engage with the Durham Herald:
- Read the opinion page that appears in print each day, and is especially strong on Sundays;
- On www.heraldsun.com, the letters appear on the home page for a portion of each day under “Latest News” and can always be found under the Opinion menu tab;
- The impact of a good letter or guest column is greatest when the link gets shared on social media. As much as two-thirds of the people who end up viewing any given story on the Herald-Sun website, gets there via Facebook, Twitter or another social media platform.
We reserve a final judgement as to whether citizens will in fact fare better than when we had an active Chapel Hill News. We now subscribe to the Herald-Sun so we can test out that hypothesis.
So far Schultz’s prediction for more printed news coverage for Chapel Hill and Orange County seems accurate. However, we don’t see the same opportunity to question the party line version of events from Town Hall, nor an opportunity to write a letter to the editor in the print version of the Herald-Sun. The jury is still out on that one.
In this age of readily available information, why is a local newspaper valuable?
The value of local press is explored in this article from the Guardian. “The best local newspapers are …proving that in a world where there are a million views and interpretations of the news at the touch of a button residents, more than ever, need their local media to make sense of the digital cacophony around them.”
Why does local news matter?
Many people answered this question here. Here are a few reasons we suggest:
- As Gandhi commented, setting up a newspaper through which all news is filtered brings people together.
- A local news source helps to make sense of a lot of information through a community perspective.
- A local news source holds elected officials to account by succinctly covering local town and commissioner meetings. Most people don’t have time to attend these meetings.
- Local news educates the citizenry about local problems and issues.
Where does our local news come from now?
- Daily Tar Heel The Tar Heel Editors are promising expanded coverage of town affairs.
- Chapelboro Limited to local WCHL radio commentary, on line stories and sports.
- Public Radio Local news on WUNC is almost entirely focused on state-level issues.
- Herald-Sun Now a two county paper. See how to engage above.
- News of Orange Northern Orange and Hillsborough news.
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Southern Neighbor
Contributor: Julie McClintock