Local versus National News Coverage

 "The first essence of journalism..." John Gunther

 

    In perusing the Portland Press Herald this week, I took care to analyze just how coverage unfolds in a national sense as well as a local one. I also was careful to think about how I tend to seek out news myself on both a national and local scale. I concluded that while the local lense tends to condense bigger categories like politics and environment as they relate to the voices of individual communities, issues, and interests, national news tends to include a wider lense with the opportunity to attract a much more diverse audience. The national news isn't just targeting one demographic, but the multiplicity of readers across the country and potentially beyond. The above quote seemed to stick out to me because both types of news coverage have different priorities when it comes to scope. Locals are going to paint a much different picture than a collective body of sources from a national perspective. In this sense, journalists are utilizing this ability to seek out the "who" behind the story. Perspective has everything to do with quality journalism. national and local are both necessary perspectives to the whole of communication and effective journalism. 

In terms of similarities, both national and local news produce relevant content that engages the public in different ways. The local apparatus for politics tends to highlight crucial issues/voices and essentially gives off a sense of how readers are impacted and can engage more deeply. Whereas national news tends to highlight key events and promote understanding but not so much the deep sense of engagement that local news offers. 

For instance, if we look at the political section of the Portland Press Herald, we find categories of local and national scale. Just a brief glance at the local headlines we see the following: "How Maine's members of Congress voted last week," or this, "Rep. Pingree meets with Romanian leader on Ukrainian Humanitarian Crisis." Here is an example of political issues being applied to a local scale. We know about the Ukraine crisis, and the article articulates how our local representatives are involved. It's not just about the Humanitarian Crisis, but also highlighting how our local rep. Pingree is engaged in the matter.

National news headlines on the Portland Press Herald that stuck out were "Biden to rally Western allies: What to Know," and "How Europe is responding to Ukrainian Refugees." These articles both stuck out to me as examples of how national news operates in a broader playing field. Readers can expect to glean major national or international coverage, often with a breakdown of what it means, but not so much a depiction of these major events projected onto a local demographic. 

Aside from the diverse audience and lens capacities national and local news coverage support, there is the element of sources to be considered. Local news seems to have far fewer sources that its' national counterpart. This is rather expected, considering that local news holds a more general or communal view and often relies on the voices of members within the community and local government. National news, in contrast, tends to have more sources and paints a broader picture that necessitates many more avenues of exploration in order to tie it all together more broadly. They are essentially responsible for zooming out but still providing relative content to a wide array of people. In observing this, I imagine that national news has to cover a lot more ground to be important and intriguing on a bigger scale and thus requires a wider range of subject matter to focus on and pull together. 

Overall, both modes of coverage have their similarities and provide relevant content that attracts respective audiences and provides different modes through which active readers can gather a sense of the world and how it relates to them/why they should care or listen. Both scopes can be positively used to collectively achieve social and civic engagement while stitching together people and places through the fabric of journalistic integrity and focus.