I will pat our back, all our backs, at least for a moment. While reorganizing myself after a busy last Sundance, I bumped into a result of the 2025 Park City community survey that suggested local news media entities are connecting well, especially compared to social media sites, when it comes to where people turn for information about the municipality. Here, at least, is evidence of an oasis in the ever expanding news desert: 77% of survey takers list The Park Record, 72% list KPCW, and 56% list Town Lift. From there it drops to 47% for email, 39% word of mouth, and then down the 30s into social media: Instagram 36%, Facebook 33%, NextDoor 33% and X way down there at 6%. Park City’s website nets 31% and their newsletter 30%. I heard similar in my out-and-about forays about questions for prospective jurors in court. Less precise, though in the 7-of-10 range, they reported getting their news from The Park Record and KPCW. And only anecdotally, the unsolicited love expressed for my baby has shot up rocket-like in the two-plus years I’ve been fortunate enough to be here and help build out our news structure — and the community has had a chance to see what we’re really about. Even a remaining skeptic of our owners told me last week his family had become habitual readers of the print edition. Our whole local news media sphere might be the richest among the ski towns. I used to think the Aspen area was the most crowded and competitive this way, with two seven-day dailies, two weeklies, a local NPR station like KPCW and an online-only outlet serving the larger community. That might still be the standard, but I think ours has become the most comprehensive in terms of local news coverage and the way we each do it, both overlapping and different from the other. And I’ll be smug, even. I think we’ve each become better than our counterparts in Aspen. I know I’m being entirely self-serving, but also honest and I believe I do have a critical eye. I realize, in some respects quite painfully, my baby has a long way to go before we’re anywhere near grown up as an operation. I often bump into our rivals, our frenemies on the coverage trail. These characterizations are too strong, though. For me, they are friends, fellow travelers who share the same joys and pains and obstacles to our work informing you with information gathered independently from the powers that be, as well as regular folk. We fight the same undercurrents if you look at the 75% loss of actual journalists in our country since 9/11 and corresponding rise of what I consider cheese food: pundits, influencers, creators, propagandists, bots typically promising “unbiased reporting” while providing the exact opposite.   I love the too-frequent “Why aren’t they reporting that!!” Um, because it’s almost always bullshit? The more political and sensational the exclamation, the more you can count on excrement in the unvetted channels until proven otherwise. Actual fair journalism does not and cannot guarantee total and complete truth, however. That’s the rub in our age of people lacking civic and media literacy, not to mention the decline in reading, critical thinking skills, ability to focus and comprehension. We’ve become triggered, from preadolescence through all the phases of adult life when we should know better. It’s also hard to take troll-type critics seriously when they call letters to the editor and other labeled opinion pieces “biased journalism.” But I guess how would they know if their diet runs heavy on cable, social, Substack and such, the turf of blowhards who seldom if ever break news? Our journalism is defined by the necessity of reporting accurately from primary sources and hampered by the obstacles to doing so. Too often, those are public entities such as governments themselves, as well as the private sector. Increasingly, they’ve fallen into the fiction that public relations professionals help them in avoidance of reporters while trying to burnish brands with ultimately corrosive propaganda in the effort to look good. More cheese food. I know I’d scare the crap out of my clients as a PR person just in being blunt with failings as well as glories, and thereby helping the brand in the longer run by being in fact honest and straightforward. And yes, without giving away private or proprietary information, or what can’t legally be shared. It would work, too, if simply because no one else is doing that. But of course, here I am, preening. We screw up plenty, too. Here’s a one painful example from last week, an opportunity we let slip during Sundance. You can guess my excuse, though it is wanting. I also stumbled while getting myself reorganized Saturday into an email that a reporter had dutifully passed on early last week about a traditional Seudat Hoda’ah recognizing the last body of a hostage taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Problem was, the event was last Wednesday. This was no mere “Doh!” like most opportunities we miss, being able only to get to a fraction. The rabbi had let us know a couple of days ahead of time. I had filed the email in a look-at-later folder for when I could catch my breath, assuming it was something taking place the following week or month. I take no solace that others also overlooked the email. Our friends at the other outlets didn’t cover the event, either. It could be that the rabbi sent the invite only to our reporter, someone he knew and trusted. And so we — I — let part of our community down, with something hugely important not only for them, but for the world and for our community. That’s not a pat, but instead a kick a bit lower down the backside I’m giving myself now. It’s also a lesson, if not exactly the best way to learn. Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745. The post Journalism Matters: Lessons in this calling land in humility most of all appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less