Column: Most important national stories are, at their essence, local stories first
By Jeremy Borden
It was a young Bob Woodward working for the Metro (local news) section of the Washington Post who helped break open the Watergate investigation that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon.
That makes sense. Most important national stories are, at their essence, local stories first.
I know I was among many in journalism circles who were disheartened to see that the print Metro section of the Washington Post is being folded into another part of the newspaper. Inevitably, this will mean less investment in covering local news around the nation’s capital at a time when the President has ordered the National Guard to patrol city streets as if it were an occupied territory.
One of the great experiences and honors of my life was covering local news for the Post earlier in my career under some of the most ambitious and talented people I have ever met. That it will now be diminished is depressing to me — but it also is one example of larger trends and bigger stakes.
The rise of inequality and the chipping away at institutions, including in media, news and information, that serve regular people at the behest of a new class of American oligarchs, is at the heart of our democracy crisis.
In many cases, the news organizations that do exist are unable or unwilling to confront this threat directly—they may not see it as their role, understand the stakes, or they may not believe they can counter state-sponsored propaganda to cover their communities in a way that holds the powerful accountable.
When the media does effectively serve as a counterweight, those who get that information often can take action on it because they are willing to pay for news — something only a relative few in the U.S. are willing to do. Which leaves too many in the dark and relying on algorithmic-fed propaganda and disinformation on social media.
We need new investments in community news and information infrastructure, here in North Carolina and around the country. And we must make persuasive arguments about how democracy is meant to serve all of us, regardless of how much money is in our bank account, the color of our skin or where our family comes from.
It’s no accident that the diminishment of the Post’s local news coverage is another in a series of capitulations from owner Jeff Bezos, who has gotten considerably richer during Trump’s term. We’ve also seen the Post capitulate to conservative outrage and stand behind Trump-world propaganda in the firing of columnist Karen Attiah for giving her opinion (supposedly her job) in reflecting on the political climate Charlie Kirk worked to achieve in the aftermath of his murder.
As Patrick Redford of the news and commentary website The Defector put it, “There's more of a [profit] in positioning your paper as a semi-official mouthpiece of an American dictatorship than holding up a flashlight for Democracy,” he wrote.
The Post isn’t the only example of media that fails to serve as an effective counterweight to authoritarianism.
In order to ensure CBS parent company Paramount could complete a lucrative merger subject to review by the Trump administration, 60 Minutes settled a frivolous lawsuit from Trump personally, handing him a multimillion-dollar payout. CBS also canceled the late-night talk show of comedian and Trump critic Stephen Colbert. And then CBS hired right-wing provocateur Bari Weiss to head its news division.
Meanwhile, MSNBC fired a commentator for accurately describing Kirk’s effect on our country’s political atmosphere. It came in response to Kirk’s fans, who generally overlap with the President’s base, loudly seeking his ouster.
Maybe, you might say, we just go around the media and invest in influencers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, where millions of Americans get news and information. Perhaps we simply push pro-democracy arguments there and those platforms will be how we galvanize movements for a better future in North Carolina and beyond.
That can and should be part of the strategy, but it won’t be that simple or that easy.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has enacted policies to respond to the Trump administration’s critiques, and owner Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s presidential inauguration fund and has actively work to cozy up to him by changing his company’s policies to please the President and his administration. Of course, Twitter CEO Elon Musk actually joined the Trump administration for a period … lest we forget. And the Trump administration recently engineered TikTok’s forced sale to Trump allies. There is speculation that the President’s son, Barron Trump, will join the company’s board.
That these social media companies are allied with the President and his administration is no accident, as UNC-Chapel Hill professor and New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote after the President and his allies used the murder of Charlie Kirk to criminalize dissent:
“The internet and the people who, for all intents and purposes, now own it, have excelled at making Trump good at authoritarianism. They commodified information. They quelled regulation. They escaped blame for degrading collective action while raking in profits for spectacles of violence that degradation predictably produces.
Now, via their president, they are using it to crush the First Amendment, to supercharge the Second Amendment, to stand up bot armies and real armed militias to defend their ownership of your civil liberties.”
So where should those of us — most Americans who do not want to live under authoritarian rule — build our following and put our time and investments in a system rife with broken and capitulating media infrastructure?
In North Carolina, Beacon Media is poised to be a big part of that answer for our state and for our collective democracy.
We can’t easily replace social media companies in the short term, reliably pressure them to treat our arguments fairly, or to stop spreading propaganda and disinformation that supports the Trump administration’s lies.
That’s why Beacon Media builds around local, grassroots advocates and the infrastructure that serves them — community-level local news and information infrastructure.
We invest in Beacon Voices — local, grassroots leaders already doing great work in their communities — and build infrastructure aimed at elevating their voices at the community level, including the use of social media but not exclusive to it. That means free syndication in community newspapers and radio in English and Spanish, connecting those who have important sway in our communities with our content and Voices. We aim to galvanize the Black, Latino and rural audiences who have the most at stake in this current fight for a democracy that serves all of us.
Investing in Beacon Voices like Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Martin Henson and Shannon Moretz, for example, will allow us to be resilient regardless of the platforms where they choose to communicate. Each of them and others we work to build around and elevate in their communities are doing the work that builds community, strengthens democracy and relies on good, factual information and storytelling about what is happening in North Carolina and why it matters.
That means building better North Carolina communities around working class people and stories (Gwen), understanding issues that affect the Black community, particularly Black men (Martin) or those that challenge our rural communities (Shannon) because it is their life’s work and part of who they are as communicators and community leaders.
Beacon can work to power map how information moves at the community level and empower audiences who have the most at stake in this fight to know what’s happening and build trust around Beacon Voices that offer a better way forward.
Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker writer and Columbia University professor, also believes we must elevate local news, information and others who can make credible pro-democracy arguments. The reasons are simple:
“The editor of the local newspaper, the reporter people are familiar with, the family physician who has taken care of you and your siblings—these figures have credibility in a way that large national institutions do not,” he said in Harpers Magazine.
The once-powerful news organizations like the Washington Post are in a diminished state to be able to amplify the voices that will make our communities stronger. At the same time, Beacon Media does not seek to replace or compete with existing news and information sources; they must still play an important role, and all of us should ask whether our state and local news organizations are doing their job of helping us understand our world so that we can be more informed residents and neighbors at this critical time.
But as the landscape changes, we can respond to this new reality.
“The fight against disinformation starts with connection,” the strategist Will Robinson writes. “We’re building stories and movements grounded in truth, solidarity, and courage — not fear.”
Building is right. We can build around the people that are doing the work to serve as bulwarks for our democracy. We can uplift them, build new infrastructure around them and counter those who benefit from propaganda and disinformation, galvanizing communities too much of the traditional news media ecosystem is leaving behind.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Sunday and I would love to hear your thoughts and comments by hitting reply!
More soon,
Jeremy Borden
Executive Director, Beacon Media
P.S. We are hosting an event with featured speakers law school professor Gene Nichol and Beacon Media founder Graig Meyer to tell you more about how you can support Beacon Media in Raleigh on November 13! Register for a free ticket and come see us!
