Reporting Local News is Vital to Our Community

Local news is critical to the success of businesses and the business community.

News readers are an engaged, local audience of consumers. Two of the top reasons why Americans read or use local news is to feel connected to the community and to find places and things to do around town.

Is this my opinion? I do agree with this, but this is information taken from America’s Newspapers 2023 Local Newspaper Study.

The study found that most Americans prefer local newspapers, more than TV, radio, or social media, to get information about local businesses, restaurants, local events, and local sports, they found.

I can agree with that too. Where else are you going to find out what’s going on in Manchester and Clay County? No other media outlets cover your county and your hometown like The Enterprise does.

Social media doesn’t even come close to covering the variety of things you can find each week in The Enterprise.

Local news is the lifeblood of any community. Without local news, rumors run rampant, residents are apathetic, and the town suffers as a result.

Without us, you would have no idea about anything going on within the fiscal court, city council and board of education.

Nor would you know anything about law enforcement arrests, court updates or any news about ongoing cases we’ve previously reported on.

No radio stations cover local news. We don’t have a television station. It’s just The Enterprise.

Are we perfect, far from it. But we try. Each week we do our best to bring you news you can use. We are making a stronger effort than ever before to advertise community events.

We recently started a Community Calendar where you can post your event—free of charge.

We aren’t oblivious to the digital age either. We have a thriving website that averages well over 50,000 hits per month! We’ve reached as many as 100,000 numerous times!

That’s unbelievable for a county of approximately 22,000 residents.

You know how we do this? Because our community is engaged. Our residents want to know what’s going on. They want to know about the wreck, the shooting, upcoming festival, and the businesses that are having sales.

They’re hungry for news and they know there’s only one entity that brings it to them daily online and weekly in print.

You can even read the entire newspaper each week, in printed form, online. We mix things up, some things we put online aren’t in the newspaper. Some things in the newspaper don’t appear online.

Local news is the lifeblood of any community. You may not agree with how we do things sometimes; you may love our approach to news coverage, but regardless, we are here for you, and we have been for well over 100 years.