Local News

I heard a snippet of a podcast the other day that reminded me of one of the tenets of this blog: to pay attention to small things, write about the mundane, stay present to daily life.

Rough Translation is a podcast that explores language and crossover of language. It delves into the social and anthropological surrounding language and how culture and tribalism also impacts words.

Yeah, fairly broad.

A recent episode “The Cat Must Still Be Fed” is about: a hyperlocal news site in Red Hook, N.Y. posts a job opening. A journalist in Ukraine applies. And what readers think of as "local news" is going to change dramatically.

At first the editor thinks its spam, a joke, a bot. Then she contacts the respondent. No, he just likes using the world wide web as a way to escape, to live vicariously—so no, he doesn’t have a background in journalism nor is he especially proficient in English. But, using algorithms and data sourced from the internet he thought he might be able to write stories about Red Hook. It was quite audacious to think he could even believe this was possible. He was an out-of-the-box person—who happened to live in Ukraine at the onset of a war of occupation. The Red Hook editor asked him how things were there.

He responded, you know, blah, the same—as there was the sound of explosions in the background. The cat still needs to be fed.

So the Red Hook editor invited him to contribute to the paper his daily mundane observations. She had no idea that it would revive her paper and increase reader engagement. People were delighted, concerned, and hungry to hear about the man’s life in war-torn Ukraine.

So from his simple reply: me, I’m your guy! Has grown an audience and local folks now brought into a world outside their own. In the midst of yard sales and running out for groceries is this other element. This man still feeding his cat and looking out for his home in a bombed out village. Here is a link to the episode:

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation

More than this, though, draw from the message that your one life matters and write about it. You never know how your words may reach out to others and cause them to listen.