In this day and age of instant gratification, it’s perhaps more challenging than ever to be in the newspaper business.
All too often, your local print newspaper lags a bit behind the area television stations and social media “news” pages. That’s the nature of the business. We are not a machine. We don’t simply copy and paste press releases. We don’t regurgitate what other news outlets have reported. What we do, as a news staff made up of actual human beings, is gather the news and, if it’s something other outlets may have already covered, we give you something new that they haven’t reported. We go more in-depth. Our reporters are the boots on the ground, so to speak. We go out and cover the news to the best of our ability. We inform you of community happenings, whether it be crime, a fatal accident, or an upcoming event that will bring the community together.
Good, bad and ugly, we are your truly local news source. We don’t just swoop in to cover something when it’s sensational; we are here for hometown events, pageants, the kid who scores a home run or his/her first goal.
Here, our communities don’t have to fight for recognition among the Fayetteville or Raleigh metro areas. That’s where community newspapers are so unique — and vital. When you want to know the local angle of a nationally reported event, the best place to go is to your local newspaper.
However, try as we might, we are not omniscient. We rely on our community and our sources to let us know when something big is going on, or is about to happen. Believe it or not, there’s no crystal ball located in our offices. Does that mean sometimes we miss things? Unfortunately, yes.
But you can rest assured that if we do happen to lag behind on a breaking news story, we will bring it to you in its entirety with vetted information as soon as we can ascertain the situation and how best to communicate it to you. That is when social media can come in handy — we can report news items that just can’t wait for the print edition. But what makes it true community journalism is that when the paper is in your hands, you’re getting the most accurate and comprehensive information possible, and more often than not, with far more sides represented than just the one who rushes out a one-side press release. We don’t have to cut it down into 30-second soundbites. We don’t have to shorten it so people won’t just scroll past it on a social media post. We gather information, report it and write it in a way that even the most complex issues are easy to understand and comprehend. That’s journalism, plain and simple. It’s what we’ve been trained to do, and have been doing for more than 100 years at The Sampson Independent.
We know that you, our readers, realize this. At least we hope you do. If you are reading this editorial, you’re likely already aware how valuable local journalism is. But if you happen to have just stumbled across this for whatever reason, we hope you’ll understand that there is no substitute for your community newspaper. The TV stations may be quicker and may have more resources, but that doesn’t mean they’re better news sources by any stretch of the imagination.
Your community newspaper understands you, where you live and what the people are like here. As we said, we don’t just come here and then leave when the big story dries up. We’re here for the long haul, and we hope you’ll be right here with us.