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It's National Newspaper Week. What's in your news diet?

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Star Herald Editorial

This week is National Newspaper Week and it’s a good time to consider why the Star Herald is worth the price of a subscription.
•We are the only news outlet that covers your school boards, city councils and Rock County Board of Commissioners.
These elected officials, dear readers, are the ones who spend your tax dollars and take action on building projects, commercial development and other matters that could affect you. Protesting a project after the cement is poured is too late. Follow your local news to stay informed along the way.
•We are the only news outlet that publishes school honor rolls, weekly high school sports contests and student artistic and academic accomplishments.
We carry news about you that you can’t find anywhere else. Why? Because it’s our job.
Occasional social media posts about local happenings are entertaining and informative, but they can’t be relied on for accuracy and consistency that professional local journalists are committed to providing.
Choose to get free “news” elsewhere? Good luck finding something substantial about something in your community.
We are your newspaper. We are your newspeople. Rock County news is what we do. It’s our job; the Star Herald isn’t a side gig that we swing on a laptop between other work.
We record the news and capture the flavor and personality of your community in a way no other news or social media outlet does.
Just ask researchers at the Rock County History Center how important the local newspaper has been in recording the history of our local towns.
In honor of National Newspaper Week, we encourage our readers to become more mindful about their “information diet,” which includes their local paper and legitimate state and national news outlets.
According to the Minnesota Newspaper Association, a lot of us are living on nutrition-free “news” that might satisfy our biases but it’s not the balanced diet we need in order to be informed citizens to participate in democracies.
Here are some ways MNA suggests we can recognize real news sites online:
•Do they sometimes make you a bit uncomfortable by raising doubts about what you thought to be true?
•Do they make it easy for you to reach a real human being if you have a question or a complaint?
•Do they correct mistakes?
•Do they ask you to subscribe? Gathering facts costs money.
For Newspaper Week this week, we at the Star Herald are grateful for your readership, and we encourage you to enrich your information diet with other trusted news sources.
An investment in a free press supports our American democracy and is therefore worth the cost of a subscription.
Call 507-283-2333 or email editor@star-herald.com to subscribe. Or, our website makes it easy to click and subscribe. See www.star-herald.com.

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