Today’s episode of The Daily Whatever Show hit differently. Maybe because
and I both grew up in the era when your hometown newspaper was as essential as your morning cereal. Maybe because our guest, the extraordinary , brought the kind of clarity, integrity, and lived expertise that makes you realize how much we’ve lost—and how much it matters.Michelle spent more than three decades in local journalism, rising to become editor of her small-town daily paper. She didn’t describe the job as a career; she described it as a calling. A form of civic service. Democracy work. The kind of work done by people who earned little, slept less, and cared deeply.
And as she walked us through what small newspapers once provided—accurate reporting, community cohesion, a neutral shared set of facts—it became painfully clear: those papers weren’t just covering the town. They were holding it together.
Michelle talked about a truth we no longer confront often enough: local news was where we once agreed on the same reality.
Birth announcements, zoning debates, who won the basketball game, which roads were closing, who got arrested, who got honored, who needed help. You didn’t have a liberal version or a conservative version—you had the news. One shared civic bloodstream.
Now? She sees people signing petitions they don’t understand, voting on issues they’ve never actually had explained, and living inside algorithmic bubbles where half the town doesn’t know what the other half thinks, sees, or fears. And the result isn’t just confusion. It’s vulnerability. To propaganda. To manipulation. To Trumpism. To extremism. To “news deserts” where bad actors thrive because no one’s checking the receipts.
Michelle explained that covering local government isn’t something tech can automate. It takes human beings—reading the council packet, going to the meetings, asking the uncomfortable questions, writing the stories, contextualizing what matters. Local reporting is labor. Care. Time. Attention. Humanity.
And no digital platform has stepped in to replace the watchdog role small papers once filled. Not Facebook. Not Nextdoor. Not hyperlocal apps. Nothing.
By the end of the hour, the chat was on fire and our hearts were heavy—but also full of admiration. Michelle reminded us that journalism, when done right, is an act of devotion to community. A democratic backbone. And losing it isn’t inevitable—it’s a choice we’ve allowed to happen.
We’ll absolutely be bringing Michelle back. And maybe next time, we’ll spend less time mourning what we lost—and more time imagining how to rebuild it.
