“Oh, I don’t read/watch the news anymore. It’s too depressing.”
There are at least four wars with 10,000+ casualties in 2025 still going on. The Epstein files haven’t been fully released, and what we have seen so far has been horrific. ICE has detained over 70,000 people with little to no due process.
You can put down your phone, but the elephant continues to suck the air out of the room whether you ignore it or not.
When it comes to negative news, here’s the million-dollar question: Is the price of being an informed citizen worth your sanity?
For many, the answer is no. It is easier to make test scores and bad weather your primary concern than it is to worry about issues that are spiraling out of control on the international stage.
As news fatigue hits America hard, there’s pressure for newspapers to make an effort to spread good news instead — because readers need it. Few people want to scroll through a comment section that is just an echo chamber of political screaming matches.
Maintaining interest becomes an issue of whether newspapers should seek out good news or prioritize honesty with readers by reporting on the world the way that it is. If news can’t strike that perfect balance, they risk death by loss of readership.
Local news will die first. It already is dying.
National news is terrifying, but national news is not the same as local news. Local news is born from a love of community.
The Panther Press covers stories that national news organizations could never, because the people we write about are the people we see every day.
The pressure to equitably cover our community is amplified when we consider that these are students who may not be featured in more widespread publications. We have to think about the unsung heroes of our school, kids doing amazing things that nobody really knows about.
We’re in charge of making sure that everyone in our school community feels represented, respected, and seen. As a student publication, we try to elevate voices and shine a light on stories, good and bad, that you deserve to know about.
We know that a lot of news outlets aren’t trusted right now. “Fake news” get thrown around often. Even though we’re just high school students, we recognize that what we do comes with the responsibility of trust.
We strive to adhere to an ethical code to make sure those stories are always fair and accurate. We know that there’s a ton of room to grow — we don’t know everything about our audience, but we’re always trying to build more connections with you.
News as a whole is not an inherently bad thing. While you’re not responsible for fixing national problems, you are responsible for some empathy. That starts by caring about your community, which you can do by simply listening to someone’s story through local news.
We have the Swarthmorean and the Delco Times to cover people in our community, but not every county can say the same.
News deserts are counties within the USA with no access to local news. Per a Northwestern journalism study from 2025, there are currently 213 — a total of more than 50 million Americans living in a news desert. They also found another 250 counties likely to become news deserts over the next ten years.
Those news deserts are growing closer and closer to home. In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is set to publish their final paper and close operation May 3. In fact, 136 newspapers have stopped operation since the Trump administration took office in 2025. The numbers of local newspapers have been dropping since 2005, starting at 7,325 and currently at 4,490.
That’s 2,835 closed newspapers in just over 20 years.
In an age rampant with misinformation spread through social media and AI, it is key for communities to have reliable sources of information when it comes to current events — whether local or national. The stories that are well-reported and thoroughly researched often come from local news.
With a lack of local newspapers, school news outlets can become responsible for not only school and local events, but making sure that communities are aware of big, national news as well. As a local newspaper, our goal is to represent the students, which means covering what they care about, no matter what.
The cost of being an informed citizen should not be your sanity, but we can’t let the elephant suffocate us into saying nothing at all. Community members must strive to stay involved with local news, working to keep it alive.
We can all make more room for some shared humanity.
The unsigned editorial represents the opinion of the Editorial Board, which consists of the majority of student editorial staff listed on this page.
