The news in Harvey County, Kansas, arrives the old-fashioned way.
There are no screen pop-ups or phone notifications. It’s ink-stained: a real newspaper, printed on dead trees, that you fold.
What You Need To Know
- Studies show Americans may not be as politically divided as it seems
- The spread of misinformation on social media has made it hard to know what news to trust
- Young Americans worry about the state of our country, but still have hope for the future
“It’s very old school,” agrees Joey Young, co-publisher of the Harvey County Now newspaper, based in the small city of Newton. “It's just the way people used to do it, instead of being inundated with dings and alerts.”
People of Harvey County, Kansas prefer to not be inundated with dings and alerts. Young’s newspaper business – he and his wife run three weeklies in south central Kansas – is growing; slowly, but growing, even amid local population loss and cost inflation that required him to boost subscription prices.
That they’re in business at all bucks a trend that distresses many who believe reputable journalism is key to a healthy democracy. Since 2005, almost 2,900 papers have closed. Divisive, partisan news sites – as well as straight-up untrustworthy and fake sites – have stepped into the void. In fact, studies find that there are more partisan sites masquerading as neutral news sites than actual daily newspapers.
Local happenings – taxes and school boards, high school sports and neighbors’ everyday heroics – are often left out, replaced by national controversy and pseudo-news that breed polarization and distrust.
And it’s driven by something that keeps getting bigger: social media.
“Social media has fractured us,” says Sue Ellen Christian, a professor in the School of Communication at Western Michigan University.
“Social media has given us so many different opportunities for information. That's a wonderful thing and also a terribly confusing thing.”
There is, of course, some trustworthy news that can be found on social media. But deciphering the true from the fake – or the exaggerated or the unbalanced – can be both difficult and exhausting.
Young’s premise is that the printed medium is key to spreading a trustworthy message. It’s all written in black and white – and, yes, color – by journalists who are trained, either by a comprehensive reporting course that the couple founded, or by other methods that stick to basics like fairness and fact-checking that are frequently in short supply.
But amid Americans’ trust in the media polling at a record low, Young has to do more. He hosts local events, including concerts and mixers at a former saloon inside the newspaper offices.
“People see us at the grocery store and the back of our shirts say ‘I support local journalism,’” said Young, who first bought the Newton paper amid concern that corporate owners were gutting local papers.
“It’s important for the community to see us out and about. They know we live here. If they have a problem with something that’s in the newspaper, they know how to get a hold of us.”
That visibility not only boosts business recognition and local pride – but gets people talking about issues of the day without the bile that often accompanies online anonymity.
“It's easier to be angry online,” Young said during a recent interview with me at his cluttered offices in downtown Newton.
“It's easier to type something out and be irritated about something. But if you're, just communicating this far apart, it's easier to hear other people's thoughts.”
A couple of towns west, Michael Glenn is doing the same thing, with a couple of twists. For one, Glenn is just 17. He and a local librarian started a news site, The Hutchinson Tribune, when they agreed the area paper wasn’t covering much local.
“I've always loved to write,” he said in an interview at a local coffee shop, just before scooting off to cover a local government meeting. “I've always loved to research, but now you're telling me I get paid to do that, and I get to have an impact on my community? I mean, that's awesome.”
He defies a generation used to a virtual life – going in person to cover local events, as long as he can borrow his parents’ car.
The Hutchinson Tribune is online, but Glenn is eyeing a printed version. But he isn’t much on social media. Like Young, he also lists his number on the news site and tries to meet in person.
“You can't just snap your fingers and people believe you,” Glenn said. “You have to build that trust. You have to. And you build it by being public, being accountable. If you make a mistake, own up to it.”
It’s long been obvious that social media use is soaring, while traditional media intake has fallen. It’s harder to tell how much those trends affecting the trust we have in the information we consume, though it clearly is having an impact, according to Christian, the Western Michigan University professor, who studies media literacy.
She cites a 2018 study that found only about a third of adults in the United States can differentiate an opinion from a fact – carrying alarming consequences for a functioning democratic republic.
“Our democracy depends on shared facts and on accurate information,” she told me. “And if we do not have that, we cannot govern ourselves and we deserve self-government.”
She launched an exhibit to teach people how to spot what’s true – and what’s not – and advises people to spend at least six seconds assessing information online before sharing, and possibly spreading falsehoods. After all, it’s often hard to tell what is true– or at least what requires more nuance and context.
That’s also where careful journalists like Joey Young and Michael Glenn come in, at least at one local level in a stretch of Kansas.
“We're not out to get anybody, but we help hold government accountable,” says Glenn. “We are the main cheerleader of our community and communities die without local journalism.”
Young adds: “At the end of the day, we want people to know that if we publish something, that they can trust it.”