Unlike Time magazine, U.S. 1 doesn’t have a tradition of choosing a person of the year for its last issue before the New Year break. But if it did, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to copy Time’s group of recipients for 2018: “The Guardians” who are on the front lines of “The War on Truth.”
Our choice would be the community journalists who continue to keep an eye on the workings of town halls, school boards, planning boards, police departments, and private enterprise throughout our region. We would salute not only the editors and reporters on our own staff, but also the many freelance writers who connect us to stories we would not otherwise be able to cover. We would also tip our cap to the journalists grinding out content at our many friendly competitors, both in print and online.
At the community level we are not often in the cross hairs of the war on truth described by Time. But we have our own challenges: Competition from online media that aggregate the content of others; financially constrained news sources that no longer provide background information for reporters; and institutions that prefer to speak directly to their base audience through social media (or not speak at all).
The end result is a corps of journalists who are either underpaid or over-worked — usually both. We thank them here, as well as the many people in our community who bring potential stories to our attention. And we also express our gratitude to our readers, without whom this venture just be a tree falling in the middle of the forest.
To one and all, have a great holiday and a healthy new year.
