NewsBeat

March 2019 NewsBeat 19 Being immersed in a place changes the way you operate as a journalist. You think twice about taking somebody down if you know her husband and her children. "We can do that?" I brightened. OK. Before I give the well-meaning folks in HR or the community outreach office an aneurysm or scare off post-millennial prospects in search of nap rooms and avocado toast, I should quickly say I'm not recommending a return to the squalor and arrogance of the newsrooms of yesteryear. But I do think they are worth contemplating with more than sentimental nostalgia. What gave the political editor the standing to publicly humiliate officeholders and would-be officeholders? What gave the assistant city editor the swagger to tell a source?—?and reader?—?to, um, buzz off? It was the confidence that comes from being part of a community. You know what I'm talking about: When you're part of a family, you're entitled to dish out and you can expect to receive tough love. You can say and hear things from other family members that neither they nor you would tolerate from outsiders. The reporters at The Pittsburgh Press called the place we covered home. We understood our readers because we commuted to work on the same roads, sent our kids to the same schools, shopped in the same stores, played in the same parks and attended the same places of worship. My years working at my hometown paper, followed by years I spent in Washington walking a local beat for papers in Pittsburgh, Houston and Little Rock, taught me a lot. It's why, though I was shocked by Donald Trump's election, I wasn't particularly surprised. I had spent decades getting to know the resentments that animated his voters. A lot of journalists missed it because they never got to do what I did. It's hard to imagine an editor today assigning a reporter to cover a state legislative race from beginning to end. Or a Washington correspondent spending day after day visiting the offices of local members of Congress to find out what's on the minds of the representatives, and their constituents. Too often now stories about fly-over country are told by people with parachutes. They read as if written by an anthropologist observing a strange tribe. An anthropologist can be arch and supercilious but she speaks to an audience of outsiders. She can't deliver a well-aimed, well-timed "F?—?k you" or a "What IN THE HELL do you think you are doing?" when people in power need it. Our communities are the poorer for that. Being immersed in a place changes the way you operate as a journalist. You think twice about taking somebody down if you know her husband and her children. Conversely, it's harder for a politician to dismiss as purveyors of "fake news" reporters whom their colleagues and constituents know as familiar faces. That's why four decades after starting my career at a local newspaper, I've come full circle. My time in Washington taught me that the nationalization of news and politics has not been good for either. I saw it turn the people I covered?—?and some I worked with? —?from intelligent actors capable of seeing past political differences to ideological automatons, from caring members of a community to click-baiting carnival barkers, more interested in selling tickets to the freak show than in building something that will last beyond the next news cycle. I have come to believe that the problems we are facing as a society and as an industry will best be solved at a local level, where it's easier to see the humanity in each other and to appreciate the importance of separating facts from propaganda. As a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, I will be working with the university-owned local newspaper, local radio station and local television station to teach community reporting to our students. Maybe someday one of them will remember me as one of the outspoken eccentrics in a newsroom where she learned to give voice to the voiceless, to challenge those who usurp power, to deliver a well- timed "What the hell?" when somebody important needs to hear it. I can't think of a finer legacy than the one I hope to earn by bringing my career full circle: Back to local news. Kathy Kiely is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. She spent more than three decades in Washington as a reporter and editor for regional and national news organizations. — Reprinted from Medium.com

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