EDITORIAL: Because we know you

Local news is still the most trusted journalism in the country. And it’s the only way our story will be told.

April 8, 2026

By John Boit

Thursday, April 9, is National Local News Day. And as much as people gripe about news, let’s recognize something that doesn’t always get said plainly enough: Local news is still the most trusted form of journalism in this country. And, in many ways, it’s the most essential to our daily decision-making.

A couple of years ago, I spoke to a journalism class at George Stevens Academy. I asked the students a simple question: How many of you trust national news?

A few hands went up.

Then I asked how many trusted their local news.

The majority of students raised their hands.

I asked why. From the back of the room, a student said: “Because we know you.”

Bingo.

That’s the difference. Local journalism isn’t produced by faceless institutions or distant voices. It’s produced by your neighbors – by the people you see at the post office, at the school, and at the grocery store.

And that proximity matters. It creates accountability. It builds trust. It demands accuracy in a way that no algorithm or national outlet ever can. And it’s why, when we make mistakes — and we do make them — we correct them quickly.

Without local news, communities don’t just become less informed. They become more vulnerable. In the absence of reliable information, rumor fills the void. Confusion replaces clarity. And the shared understanding that holds a community together begins to erode.

Local journalism pushes back against that. It creates a common set of facts. It gives people the tools they need to make decisions about their schools, their taxes, their roads, their future.

And along the way, through words and sounds and images, we tell our collective story of a group of people banded together in rural coastal communities in the early part of the 21st century in a rapidly changing and uncertain world.

Here on the Blue Hill Peninsula, we are far more fortunate than many places in this country because we still have a network of local news organizations doing this work every day. In our area, that includes the Bangor Daily News, the Maine Monitor, the Ellsworth American, Penobscot Bay Press, and WERU, along with The Rising Tide.

Each serves a role. Each strengthens this region in its own way.

And each needs support. Not someday. Now.

Because the truth is, local journalism does not survive on goodwill alone. It survives because people decide it matters — enough to read it, to share it, to support it.

If we believe that access to reliable information is a basic human right — and I do — then supporting the institutions that provide it is an investment in us, in our shared future, and in our story. 

So today, on Local News Day, I would ask you to do something simple: support local news.

Support this outlet. Support others. Support all of them.

Because in the end, this work only continues if the community it serves chooses to stand behind it.

And the reason it works — the reason it always has — is the same reason that student gave me, without hesitation:

“Because we know you.”

And we intend to keep it that way.

—Boit is the publisher and editor of The Rising Tide.

The Rising Tide welcomes letters and opinion pieces from a wide variety of viewpoints. Published pieces do not reflect the editorial stance of The Rising Tide or its board, and are not endorsements. To submit a piece to us, email info@risingtide.media. We ask that all submissions be original and exclusive to The Rising Tide.