Shop local.

You often see us write these words in editorials on this very page and use the verbiage in many of our online posts as we tout local businesses and the importance of supporting those who support its citizens.

We say it often, we believe it, and we do it each and every time we can.

Others do the same, using our newspaper and social media to tout things that our local businesses are doing, encouraging people to frequent those stores whose owners support our schools, help with our fund-raisings, go to church with us, sit in the athletic stands beside us and, in many cases, return the favor by supporting our own retail endeavor.

We even do “cash mobs,” from time to time, events where people are encouraged to show up at a local business and spend money, helping provide an influx of dollars into one of the locally-owned shops in our midst. We have supported each and every endeavor — promoted it in fact — because it is the right thing to do, and beating the Shop Local drum is as natural for us as heralding the many things our youth do in schools and on athletic fields.

Despite our own mantra to shop local, it’s infrequent, if at all, that we use this page to talk about ourselves as a local business, though we are and have been for over 100 years. We are great at promoting others, less so about promoting ourselves. And, honestly, that is as it should be. We never choose to use our pages as a bully pulpit. We prefer to use our ink to inform the public in as many ways as we can — honestly and fairly.

So today’s editorial is a reminder that when you shop local remember to support your local newspaper. Doing so enables you to be an informed resident; a champion of all those touted within our pages day to day; an investor in community journalism designed to keep our government officials honest, our schools promoted and impartial, honest story-telling brought to the masses.

Some might argue that you can get all that from social media. The truth is — you can’t. Press releases dolled out by government agencies on websites and any number of other platforms are one-sided, and unless a person vets it on their own, what you read is what you get. The same is true when an individual posts something they’ve seen in their neighborhood or on a roadway they’ve traveled. No vetting, no impartial facts, only one-side commentary.

Couple that with the fact that word is then spread only among the handful of friends one might have and swap stories with and the social media circuit becomes nothing more than a circle, with strict algorithms that determine what actually gets exposure and to how many. In truth the numbers are slim at best.

Social media has its place for certain. Finding old classmates, sharing weddings and the tragedy of a lost loved one with faraway friends makes it worth keeping around. In fact, we use it to promote our hard-working journalists and the stories they tell.

But social media isn’t local; the owners of sites like Facebook, Instagram and X don’t support your athletic teams or offer props when towns, individuals and businesses do something good.

That’s what your local newspaper provides.

The Sampson Independent is a decades-old local business. Its employees live here, pay taxes here, shop here and have become embedded in the culture here. Some have lived here all their lives, others have come to think of Sampson as their own after being hired as a part of the local newspaper team.

For some, saying the newspaper is local and supporting it because it is local seems unnatural somehow, and for reasons we can’t fathom.

We have sadly watched local newspapers fade into oblivion in other communities across the nation. We even bought one in neighboring Mount Olive because residents and business owners there said when their local newspaper folded it hit close to home, and they realized too late just how valuable it was to everyone.

We are blessed to have the support of many, many businesses and many readers, too, and we are thankful. But there are many out there who depend on us yet don’t consider us local.

In truth, we couldn’t be more local, and we are proud of that fact.