By Patrick Wood
Publisher
Dear Reader,
Most of us believe that buying stuff locally is a good thing. We can spend our money at a mom-and-pop store, or a big box store in our area, or even frequent the farmers market on weekends.
Every dollar that is given in these transactions remains in the community. And, the monies that stay in our cities, villages, towns and townships help pay taxes for better roads, better sidewalks, better parks, better everything.
Spending currency outside our community, like for online goods is okay for scoring that obscure item not easily obtainable in-store and can be convenient, but rarely does any of that legal tender find its way back here.
It just goes somewhere else and is theoretically used in making their communities stronger and not ours.
Our stewardship is to focus on all things hyper-local such as exhorting folks to buy local and even caring from a media awareness and sensitivity perspective for those on the lowest rungs of the ladder, the homeless.
Also importantly, an essential part of our mission is disseminating the news for and about the lives of the people and events in our community.
If we don’t report on what has transpired at city council meetings, who will. If we don’t report on the decisions made at school board meetings, who will. If we don’t report on high school sports and other key occasions in this area, who will. In sum, if we don’t intelligently and comprehensively cover the local news in this area, who will?
The reality is that we all need to pull together and collectively support our communities by thinking and buying local. In the long run, our tiny corner of the world through this type of biased behavior will always be a good place to dwell and to prosper.