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Comment by yasth | Hacker News Reader

Rarely does a good local reporter just sit in on the meetings generally they also get some background from parties presenting, and on the council. Often they even develop sources that provide a bit more insider information.

And most importantly they follow up. The meeting is the start. Ihe rest is follow through. If the council are approving a special zoning permit, they go out and talk to neighbors, or the contractors previous special work, etc.

To say that you can just get some text is a bit like suggesting that wget is a good replacement for a web browser. Sure it does some of the stuff, but it isn't the real deal.

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You just focused on local reports adding information but I think even more important is that they summarize information and boil the issue down to a couple paragraphs of text, in turn making the information much more easily accessible. Watching an hour long meeting or reading pages of transcripts to extract the useful information is a very different time investment compared to just reading a couple of paragraphs about a topic. (I’m sure most people could do it and maybe even gain a better understanding of the issue compared to just reading a newspaper article but they definitely won’t since the time investment is just not worth it.)

One of the most important functions of the news is to pick and chose which information is important and relevant and to present that information in an understandable way. To fulfill that function they do not even have to go digging for extra information (though that certainly helps and can also, crucially, help in actually picking what’s important and relevant).

Yes! And really, how many people are going to sit there through 4/5/6 hours of streaming at every meeting to get the interesting nuggets?

...or even understand why the interesting nuggets are interesting? One thing I appreciate about (good) journalism is highlighting implications that I would not have thought of myself, because I lack sufficient background knowledge.

But which local outlet does that? The local news I have access to certainly not.

They still provide summaries, meaning the needed time-investment to get a base level understanding of relevant topics is radically lower.

I think somehow dreaming up a local newspaper that does the same in-depth reporting as, say, the New York Times is just dumb and and doesn’t really help someone arguing in favor of local journalism.

Just summarizing the most important points that were discussed during a council meeting is actually plenty good enough. You could do better, but even just that provides quite a lot of value.

In most cases they don't. Which is the issue.

A number of years back, my town had a very good local newspaper that was sort of someone's labor of love but they became ill and, now, no newspaper. I basically have no knowledge of what's going on in town unless it rises to the level of importance where it gets coverage beyond the town lines. To be sure, I'm not really interested in most of what goes on but it would be nice to know.

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