Newspapers promote the value of community journalism in the wake of the Annapolis shooting - Entrepreneur Generations

Last week's deadly shooting at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette has inspired a wave of supportive columns and essays from other journalists about the value of local newspapers and community journalists.

In a column for the Miami Herald, Dave Barry reminisces about his days as a rookie reporter at the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa. Since then, he writes, most of his friends have been newspaper journalists: "No offense to any other profession, but these are, pound for pound, the smartest, funniest, most interested and most interesting people there are. They love what they do, and most of them do it for lousy pay, at a time when the economic situation of newspapers is precarious, and layoffs are common."

And though he acknowledges that a tiny fraction of journalists are incompetent or dishonest, "the news people I know are still passionate about what they do, and they do it remarkably well. And here's the corny-but-true part: They do it for you. Every time they write a story, they're hoping you'll read it, maybe learn something new, maybe smile, maybe get mad and want to do something."

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Read more here: https://ift.tt/2MDcXMX

In The Washington Post, Arelis Hernandez eulogizes Annapolis shooting victim Wendi Winters, an editor and community reporter: "No matter was too provincial, no event too pedestrian and no neighbor too ordinary for Winters to notice in her weekly dispatches. She featured an elderly couple retiring after a half-century of running a local diner and made an abandoned missile site sound like a worthy Saturday afternoon jaunt." She "made the mundane marvelous."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2KyAscP Newspapers promote the value of community journalism in the wake of the Annapolis shooting - Entrepreneur Generations

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