My town as two newspapers and two TV new stations. They employ more than a dozen journalists, including an old friend of mine.

If you want any actual important news, you go to Facebook and make sure that you’re following the right people and you’re in the right groups, because that’s where the news about local governance and politics actually comes out. The papers and TV stations almost always run bland human interest stories, business propaganda, press release reprints, a huge selection of national and sports news, etc. a few years ago, both papers announced they wouldn’t report most local crimes anymore unless they were particularly notorious.

After a few months or sometimes years if a local story has become big enough, they’ll deign to cover it, usually without crediting the people who actually broke the story to everyone paying attention.

When local professional journalism is this bad, it’s nobody’s fault but them whe nobody wants to pay for it.