Scan the local newspapers to see how much of the news that is printed is local news. Most news is not local news, it’s national or international or features, which isn’t really news, but takes up a lot of reading space.
Either there just isn’t much news going on in Hawaii, or local news is too expensive to gather and report. After all, if there’s no money in it, why bother?
The local television stations have newscasts at 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM, but the local news that makes it to TV is shared, 20-minutes or so for each half hour newscast, with national news, feature items, weather, and sports. Not much local news makes it to local television.
The local newspapers are mostly advertising, which is mostly local advertisements, which adds support to the issue about money. There’s money in local advertising, so the newspapers bother with it. There must not be much money in local news because what local news shows up in the local newspapers is shared by national news, features, sports, stocks, business, weather, etc.
My rough estimate indicates that less than 10-percent of a local newspapers pages, on a column inch basis, are devoted to local news. How about online? HawaiiReporter is full of news, though little of it is local, much of it does not pertain to Hawaii, much is opinion or perspective rather than news.
It’s not my intent to fault local media, but it should be obvious that there isn’t much money in reporting local news, or there’s little of interest to report.
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