Janhavi Tandon
The primary purpose of journalism is to serve the public, and what better way to indulge in public welfare than to bring out stories from the grassroots. The weight of localization of news is felt when local or regional stories that actually matter come to light.
While flipping through the newspapers you must have seen a page or two about local news.The idea behind this segment is that with the change in audiences, their tastes and preferences, news needs to be changed too- to cater to a diverse audience and highlight what lies uppermost in their priority list as a citizen of a particular society, community or region.Be it a pothole issue, or a local girl winning PM’s scholarship,localization of news would ensure that such stories don’t get pressed by the ‘issues of national importance’ because each story matters.
Localization of news has also given rise to regional news channels, newspapers and community radio stations.This action not only benefits the consumers of news but the producers as well by increasing readership, subscriptions, engagement and thus revenue.
Localization of national news connects people to the reported event, thus making them feel that what’s happening on a larger scale matters to them. For instance, a news pertaining to introduction of GST may not have made much sense to a local trader of Jaipur but another one in a Jaipur Daily titled ‘GST: Affecting the Lives of Local Jaipuria Traders’ must have.
In a nutshell, when audiences, circumstances, issues and events change every kilometer, it becomes necessary to adapt stories accordingly no matter how big or small they are because in the end, each story matters.
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