Following local news can make your community feel more familiar and give you more reasons to get involved. Learn to pay more attention to what’s happening closer to home.
When’s the last time you checked your local news? In today’s media landscape, you can know every detail of a national controversy while barely knowing what happened two blocks away.
Local news may seem like an old-fashioned source of information, but it can actually play a key role in keeping you connected to your community.
One recent study published in the Journal of Communication found a link between local news and lower reports of loneliness. At the state level, places with fewer local news options reported higher loneliness. In a national survey, the researchers also found that people who rarely followed local news reported more loneliness than those who followed it more regularly.
While these findings are correlations, they hint that shared local information may influence how connected people feel to their neighborhoods. As community ties dwindle and people become more likely to hunker down, local news makes the abstract notion of “community” more visible and tangible.
One function of local news is learning about events that you can actually show up to. Without it, you might miss that free concert in the park, a new neighborhood book club, or that holiday fair on Main Street.
Even when you’re not showing up somewhere, local news can still foster a sense of belonging by keeping you in touch with the people and stories in your hometown. A story about a local musician finding success or a high school team winning a championship can inspire community pride. You may never meet those people, but knowing their stories can make you feel part of a shared world. Following these local news stories gives you shared reference points with your neighbors, making it easier to find common topics to talk about and bond over.
In a 2001 study, researcher Clyde Bentley contacted subscribers after they reported a missing newspaper. He found that subscribers missed more than the information itself. They also missed the emotional connection the paper provided: it kept them tethered to their community through local stories, obituaries, and even news that tuna was on sale at the market. One 80-year-old woman remarked, “We look forward to the paper coming. It’s kind of like a friend or neighbor coming in.”
Where to Find Local News and Community Information
Your local newspaper or TV station is a good place to start if they are still available to you. Even just checking in for a few minutes every morning can give you a better sense of what’s going on in your community that week and what weather to expect. You can also check their websites or look for other online local news outlets like Patch, where residents can also share news and events.
In addition to news sources, neighborhood groups on Facebook or Nextdoor can give you a more grassroots sense of what is going on in your community. Places like this serve as an online town bulletin board, where people can post various things from free furniture and lost dogs to local gigs and odd jobs. Keep in mind that these feeds can also attract rumors, gossip, and drama, so be selective about which groups you follow and how you participate in them.
Event listings and community calendars are a useful way to find things to do nearby. Meetup is one helpful site for finding groups and activities with shared interests, like a local book club or archery class. And Eventbrite is a great way to find listings for local music shows, festivals, and open-mic nights.
Once you plug more into your community, you’ll likely find better sources to follow, but these are a solid starting point.
Try building a local news feed of your own that you can check in with regularly. Consider a mix of one local outlet, one neighborhood feed, and one events calendar.
What is one community source you could start following this week?