What in the word?

On Tuesday June 23, I went to my regular polling site, an elementary school in Bethesda, MD, to vote in my locale’s primary elections. Beforehand, I tried to learn about the candidates and where they stood on various issues.

I was already familiar with the candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and my congressional district, and there had been plenty of news about the race for county chief executive, the current one being term limited. But learning about the many candidates for School Board and the many other local offices was no easy task, no matter how hard I tried.

Just a few years ago, we received a free weekly newspaper, the Chevy Chase Gazette, delivered straight to our door, and in the run-up to elections we could always find information about all the candidates and their positions there.

After the Gazette was closed by the Post, its owner, I sometimes found some local election guidance in the parent Washington Post, but now the Post doesn’t even have a standalone metro section! Or when I was a teacher, I often got information about school board races from the teacher’s union Apple Ballot. More recently, I subscribed to The Baltimore Banner, an online news outlet that has added a Montgomery County, MD-focused, edition. It had links to a voter’s guide and ran news stories about major county races and candidate profiles highlighting their positions on various issues.

But it took me a lot of time and effort to ferret out information to help me decide how to vote. Just trying to learn which districts I was in and who was running in them was a feat! Nikki Sertsu, Planet Word’s Executive Director, told me that her daughter, a just-graduated senior, was excited to vote for the first time in D.C.’s primary but had a similar unsatisfying experience. She had also tried to research the candidates to get a sense of where they stood on issues she cares about. “She was so excited to vote for the first time,” Nikki told me, “but found the experience overwhelming and disappointing.”

Is this any way to run a rodeo — much less a democracy?

Ever since Planet Word opened, we have been advocating for reading as a way to ensure our democracy is guided by informed voters, but in reality educating myself through reading was a lot easier to talk about than to do.

And if I turned to TV for information — well, good luck with that! I could hardly distinguish truth from spin whether or not a candidate vowed that he or she had approved a particular ad! I didn’t bother looking at social media for advice, because how would I know what was true or a deepfake designed to mislead. All in all, it made trying to be an educated voter frustratingly difficult.

I wish that these difficulties in casting a meaningful ballot were the end of the story, but in fact it is an example of an even bigger problem. As noted by the American Journalism Project, which seeks to support and secure local journalism, the real cost we are paying for this lost source of voter information is much bigger.

At one of our programs at Planet Word, we heard from Sarabeth Berman, the CEO of the American Journalism Project. Sarabeth told us that 2,500 newspapers have closed since 2005 and 1,525 counties have only one remaining news outlet. And, as the AJP emphasizes, this is important because investing in the future of local news strengthens communities, deepens civic engagement, and delivers real returns for the people who depend on it.

Joshua Darr, a researcher covering the loss of local media at the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, found that:

Political competition and representation are demonstrably weaker without local coverage: research shows that shrinking newsrooms lead to fewer candidates running for local offices, such as mayor or school board, which means incumbents are more likely to win and spend less money on campaigning. Politicians who represent areas with poorer local news coverage do not work as hard in hearings and committee meetings, vote the party line more frequently, and bring back less funding to their districts . . .

Reporting on local sports teams, local cultural events, or even obituaries, brings communities together and dampens polarization. Neighbors come together around issues and events they have in common. As Darr says, “It is much harder to see the world in stark shades of red and blue if you get your news from a local newspaper.”

The pamphleteers and publishers who spread the word about our independence movement 250 years ago knew that it was important to engage the local population and rouse them to the cause. That same need for community engagement and education continues if our republic is to thrive. It shouldn’t be this hard.

—Ann Friedman, founder of Planet Word