Keeping a finger on the pulse of our community

So much has changed in a newspaper business that called my name at an early age. Journalism looks drastically different than it did just five years ago, let alone 36 years ago when I started covering local news for a living. 
I grew up in a newspaper family, so sharing sections of the World-Herald on a Sunday morning and watching my father attend local meetings and events all week long, taking pictures of as many local residents as he could, was a way of life, and a rewarding one at that.
There’s that word again and again — local. It’s the one constant, the common denominator, the thing that makes any good newspaper unique, and, frankly, the secret to success still today in a social-media-driven world.
Local coverage about your community, your four area high school sports teams, your favorite organization, your school board and city council is and always will be the bread and butter of the Aurora News-Register. This is a very unique community, in my opinion, and if we’re doing our job right there is something of interest to read about each and every week. 
If it sounds like I’m on a soap box, this is National Newspaper Week, an invitation for your’s truly to reflect a bit on our role in the community. In my mind, that role has not changed one iota, though the way in which we do it and the world we live in have been dramatically transformed.
On the technology front, for example, an in-house ANR team launched a social media initiative this past year, realizing that we not only need to deliver more local content to our viewers’ fingertips, we need to offer advertisers a platform to reach their digital audience as well. We’re doing that now, with the understanding that our business model must continue to evolve.
More and more subscribers are also logging on these days to read their News-Register online, though many, like me, still prefer the look and feel of pages turning in their hands. Change is inevitable, and constant.
As for the world we live in, being part of “the media” is a tougher gig than it once was, to be honest. Trust is no longer a given, thanks in large part to the line between facts and opinion being blurred so badly on the national level that you can no longer distinguish between the two. 
I cringe every time I see a “Sponsored content” tagline buried on a web page, knowing that many readers may not realize that story is paid advertising space, not the objective news report it appears to be. That’s just one example of the subtle games being played in the news world, similar to picking your TV news station (Fox, CNN, etc.) to get the political slant you want to hear. There should be no “slant” in good news coverage. Period.
With politics and social media dividing our nation in so many ways, this independently-owned local newspaper remains committed to keeping our finger on the pulse of our community, your community, providing objective news coverage from local sources you trust. We’re all about local, local, local — a time-tested news formula for what people care about most.
KURT JOHNSON can be reached at kjohnson@ hamilton.net