Support Local Journalism

By Gene Policinski

Sunshine Week is March 10-16, and this year, there’s an even greater need for you to get involved.

Sunshine Week annually celebrates freedom of information laws, in every state. It also salutes efforts by good government advocates and journalists, to use and ensure the effectiveness of those laws to get the information we need, as self-governing citizens.

The name is a play on the commonsense words spoken more than a century ago, by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Brandeis’ remark was not made in a court opinion. It was in a 1913 article, published in the news magazine Harper’s Weekly. Along with its observations on American culture and events, Harper’s was part of the “muckraking” news era, with journalists holding business and government accountable for corruption, waste and illegal activity.

As a special treat of each Sunshine Week, we get to see current examples of news reporting on behalf of the public, the type of journalism that the nation’s founders had in mind, when they adopted strong First Amendment protection for a free press.

Sunshine Week was started in 2005, by the American Society of News Editors. Each year, we celebrate the thousands of local, state and national print, TV, radio and online reports, that tell us what the government or others are doing, and how they are doing it; reports that explore and expose otherwise-unseen information we need to know, to make good decisions at the ballot box, when petitioning for change or simply things we should know about our communities.

But, this year, as we celebrate that work being done on behalf of democracy, there is an increasingly needed partner in that work: you and your support for local journalists.

The number of journalists continues to plummet, from more than 75,000 newsroom jobs in 2005, to 31,860 in 2022, according to the Medill Local News Initiative. Far too many of us now live in “news deserts,” areas across the nation, where not a single news outlet exists. Medill reported that in 2023, that out of 3,143 counties nationwide, 204 counties had no newspapers, local digital sites, public radio newsrooms or ethnic publications, and another 228 counties were at substantial risk of losing all local news media.

Even where there are established news media outlets, economic pressures have resulted in staff cuts, that means there is less coverage of local government institutions, like the city council, school board and local courts.

We need to face the fact that there just aren’t enough journalists to do the job of monitoring and reporting on government, business and others.

To be sure, journalists and free press advocates are working to cut those losses, and to buttress the flow of information to the public. But, even with all those longterm and new initiatives, more help is needed.

Let’s turn again to Brandeis, who, according to an article by the Sunlight Foundation in 2009, said in that Harper’s article, “The individual citizen must in some way collect and spread the information,” through civic groups and the press, which he believed would lead to “remedial action.”

This does not necessarily mean filing a Freedom of Information request. There are ways to help hold government accountable beyond this direct action.

Whether you are red or blue, progressive or conservative, Democrat, Republican or Independent, you need to support those who do that investigative work on a daily basis.

Get behind and get engaged with those who use FOI laws, and shoe-leather journalism, to bring you the facts required for real self-governance. Take that information and make up your own minds about the concerns of the day where you live – and perhaps give the national pundit class a rest.

Open your eyes, your minds – and, yes, perhaps your wallets, too – and bring a little sunlight into your life. Celebrate Sunshine Week. Justice Brandeis would be pleased, and you and your fellow citizens will be better off for the effort.

Gene Policinski is a veteran multimedia journalist and First Amendment advocate. He is one of the founding editors of USA TODAY and is senior fellow for the First Amendment, at Freedom Forum.