To the Editor:

Imagine a world without your local newspaper. Imagine a world without any newspapers. Where would you get your news about upcoming elections or about what the DOT and county commissioners plan to do with that stretch of road near your house? Would you turn to Facebook? Twitter? Platforms that have been reprimanded repeatedly for allowing the dissemination of false stories meant to manipulate and mislead readers? Speaking of Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg made it very clear that he has no intentions of stopping the spread of fake news across his platform. Why should he halt it? He’s making money either way. 

A couple of weeks ago McClatchy Publishers, parent company of the Miami Herald and Kansas City Star announced a filing of chapter 11 bankruptcy. The plan, according to McClatchy’s creditors, is to reorganize in order to offload massive debt totaling $700 million across the 30 newspaper titles they own — including our state’s two largest papers, The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer. Reorganize is a fancy way of saying trimming the fat, which is a colloquial way of saying putting journalists out of work. 

If you haven’t noticed, this trend of newspapers going belly up, whether shuttering entirely or restructuring at the expense of journalistic integrity, has been a steady occurrence for several years. According to PEN America, 20 percent of all U.S. newspapers have closed since 2004. Dwindling advertising dollars combined with the onslaught of digital takeover by Google and Facebook, has absolutely crushed print media. Today, 225 counties across the U.S. are without a newspaper and of the newspapers still operating, a sizeable number are so broke they can only afford to publish what comes down the wire from the Associated Press. This means no local news for the people living in those communities. 

The thought of not having a local newspaper may not strike others as something worth fretting over, but for me, the thought is terrifying. It should be terrifying for anyone who gives it consideration. Newspaper journalists are the eyes and ears of what’s happening in your community. They are the first on the scene and the ones who literally do the legwork, often thanklessly, of gathering facts and information to share. In fact, 90 percent of the commentary you see on television news and read online comes from the labor and work of newspaper reporters. Your favorite talking heads would be silent bobbing heads if it weren’t for the efforts of journalists. Or worse, your talking heads would simply be spokespersons for the biggest spenders in advertising. 

So why care? Because news matters. An absence of press and the disappearance of local news outlets is an invitation for the growth of misinformation, misunderstanding and propagation of false narratives. It’s handing over the voice of your community to whichever power has the strongest grip (and deepest wallet). The loss of free press is the unraveling of the foundation of our society. As journalist Richard Kluger once said, “Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism; when a great one goes, history itself is denied a devoted witness.”

 Amanda Singletary

Waynesville