TAMPA, Fla. — In some parts of our polarized society, there is a tendency to lump all "media" together. However, there is a big difference between local news and national media.
The E.W. Scripps Company partners with the News Literacy Project every year. The mission is to educate viewers about what we do, how to spot fake news, and how to be more intelligent news consumers. For this report, we decided to highlight the local journalist on the ground at three Scripps-owned stations in Tampa: ABC Action News, Ft. Myers, Fox 4, and Tallahassee ABC 27.
According to a 2022 poll from Gallup and the John S. And James and James L. Knight Foundation, "Americans continue to hold local news in higher regard than national news across a variety of metrics. However, the size of the gap in trust between local and national news has started to shift slightly by partisanship."
That shift makes our job as journalists more critical than ever.
WFTS, ABC ACTION NEWS, TAMPA
At ABC Action News in Tampa. Dozens of journalists work around the clock to report the news. Many people may not know how much work goes into a single report, especially for multi-media journalists, commonly called MMJs or one-man bands. MMJs turn stories without the help of a photographer. On busy days, the pace can be grueling.
"But it's also doing all of that in one shift, in one day, and the writing, editing, web story, and then social media. It's a lot. But I, I love it. I love the passion behind it. And I love knowing that what I'm doing is so important. Someone's going to learn something, hopefully, once they finish watching my story."
"Is there a specific reason you decided to be a local news reporter?" Paluska asked multi-media journalist Jada Williams.
"The big thing about local news is community," Williams said. "But, most importantly, that trust factor. What I love so much about local news is that it's as important to me as it is to the person watching TV; I look at what everyone around the stations is doing. And I'm like, Wait, that impacts me too. You know, I also live on the street."
Williams knows she must work even harder in a fractured media environment, where the lines between local news and national media are becoming increasingly blurred.
"This is a guarantee that I like to give whatever I do on TV, it is going to be local, at its core, it is going to present so many different sides, but nothing but facts," Williams said.
WFTX, FOX, FT. MYERS
In Ft. Myers, we went into the field to shadow Colton Chavez, the Cape Coral community reporter at WFTX. During his shift, Chavez reported in Matlacha on a business destroyed by Hurricane Ian, moving their location farther away from the storm surge.
"Why did you want to become a local news journalist?" ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska asked Chavez.
"I always wanted to help people. And I didn't know the way that I wanted to do that." Chavez said. "Growing up, my dad was a police officer, and my mom was a teacher. And so I always like to know what I want to do, something that I can help my community. For me, that's what local journalism is. It's us building our stories around people that live in the community."
"And everything we do in local news is without bias," Paluska said. "For people watching this, what would you want them to know about you as a human, not the journalists they may despise?"
"Well, I am glad you brought up the narrative. Because I just had that conversation with my news director, I said, 'You want to know what frustrates me the most? It's when I'm out in the community and somebody asks a question. 'So how many times has your news director told you to change your story? How many times has someone said, 'Hey, we're not going to report that.' And, I tell them 'never.' If anything, the question I get asked is, 'Do we have the other side? It's never about whether we have the side we care about. It's do we have both sides of the story."
There are editorial meetings before Chavez or any other reporter hits the field. Reporters pitch their ideas, which must be approved by producers, other reporters, and managers before they receive approval. Producers are always behind the scenes as a backstop, so unbalanced reports don't make air.
"And that's why it's important to have a number of different sets of eyes on a script. Because you want you want everybody to agree that it's balanced. And it has both sides," Michael Hayslip, Senior Producer at WFTX, told Paluska. "Sometimes it's hard to tell a reporter had no you've spent your day doing this. But guess what? You didn't bring me the other side of the story. And until I get that other side, we got to table this."
"Are you optimistic about the future (of local news)?" Paluska asked.
I have to be. I have to be because I wouldn't have done this. You know, for almost three decades, if I didn't believe in it, if in my heart of hearts. If anything's remained unbiased in this world if anything's remained even keel if anything sets out to tell the truth. It's not your cable news networks. It's your local news," Hayslip said.
WXTL, ABC 27: TALLAHASSEE
In Tallahassee, reporters at WTXL are out in their neighborhoods, covering their communities through a more hyper-local approach.
Journalist Maya Sargent is starting her first job in broadcast news.
"It has been challenging. There are so many new skills to learn. I have never used a proper camera or a tripod. So, my first kind of battle was to get the tripod up. I've learned so much in the past four months. Just throw myself into the deep end and see how I could figure it out."
Sargent is from the UK and moved away from her family to pursue her passion for journalism.
"I wanted to go into local news because I think that is where the real stories are being told," Sargent told Paluska.
"That is why I do what I do. I think the true impact of local news is that local news can have that effect because people know that they can put the steps in place to make change," Sargent said. "From a young age, I was exposed to how different communities can work together, how different communities are underserved, who's missing out, who is struggling. I think sometimes it feels like there's not a lot of humanity left in the world. And this job reminds me every day that there really is."
Meanwhile, Sargent is months into her new gig. Her co-worker Shamarria Morrison is not; Morrison is a senior reporter at WTXL.
"I'm going into my 7th year," Morrison told Paluska. "I went to my first job in Paducah, Kentucky."
Morrison became a journalist because she didn't see many people in the news industry who looked like her.
"I'd see many women, I didn't see many Black women, I didn't see people with hair like me, who spoke like me. And I have seen in real-time what misinformation and disinformation look like. I knew that I wanted to be that in between what's happening on those top levels in the government offices. I want to be that middleman or that middlewoman to be able to explain to my community," Morrison said. "I bring shared experiences from my culture, race, and identity. From me, being a younger journalist, of me being a millennial, these are all different, unique experiences that I can't imagine what would be missing in the newsroom conversation if I wasn't able to bring it there."
"You feel like your stories do impact lives?" Paluska asked.
"Yeah, they do 100%. Some day-to-day stories might have a small impact today. But larger-scale stories mean a lot when you're able to dig in and look at patterns and the accountability of folks; these things matter. It is my responsibility to look at those things. And that matters to people. And so it's a really big deal."
