This summer I had the opportunity to work for a small town newspaper where I covered many aspects of local news such as education, local government and social events around town.
When I was assigned my first story to cover a county council meeting, I had no idea what to expect, which proved to me that our generation is not well enough educated on local government, and not adequately aware of local news.
We live in a world that is totally consumed with national news, which is important to follow, but it is also important to follow local news. This starts with understanding how local government works. High school government classes no longer teach on local government, only covering national and sometimes state government. But the national government is not responsible for maintaining the parks in your town, or creating new bus routes for the school district to help accommodate all students. These things may seem trivial right now, but when you are raising a family when you are older, you will want to be informed on these decisions made by your local government.
Staying up to date with local news starts with supporting local news outlets. Most cities will have a newspaper, a couple radio stations that have newscasts, and a couple TV stations. Greencastle has The Banner Graphic, 94.3 WREB and no TV stations. This is a good place to start with learning about local government and keeping updated with local news. The DePauw, 91.5 WGRE and D3TV are forms of local government as well. Instead of covering a town, these outlets cover the news at your University, which in many ways run in a similar manner to a town.
I am not saying to completely stop following national news. DePauw recently subscribed to The New York Times, and I believe students need to take advantage of this resource, but it is not good to only follow national news. The best thing about local news and government is that you can have a direct impact on it. To have an impact, however, you need to be informed. Before this summer, I did not follow local news. I read the mainstream articles about national news and I considered myself informed. After being a reporter for a small town for a summer, however, I know that I was not informed. Not even close. Local news is important, and it needs to be treated as such.