> You don't just get to cover the Secretary of State's trade visit to Southeast Asia after graduating high school and working for the local paper, do you?

Hmm, there's an idea... A recurring meme is local stringers and journalists resenting high-profile journalists who "parachute" in for an event, and spin something shallow and misleading that misses the real story, the context, all nuance, and a clue.

A high-school student say visiting family in Southeast Asia, with a local paper affiliation for press credentials, and with very different constraints and incentives than US national journalists, might actually do some exceptionally nice work.

Admittedly, when US national journalism struggles to even mention say the role of pharma's insistence on imposing US regulatory-captured industrial policy on China in kicking off the trade war, it's not a very high bar.

What's missing however, is socio-technical infrastructure to reward that student. And all the local or domain-expert journalists who might also contribute better content. The contrast in quality between say "popular tech press" arstechnica journalism by Eric Berger on rockets, and the front page of NYT convering the same stories is... not a happy thing. Hmm... now what community might be able to focus on creating such infrastructure...?

Perhaps on the flip side, real journalism is more valuable locally while sensationalism is more valuable nationally. People might care about facts at home, but they seem to prefer entertainment—e.g., some tantalizing story about some group they hate—on national news. Seems like it could go either way.

Do they prefer it, or does it simply work better because they can't check whether it's true? You could do sensationalist news locally as well, but everybody drives by the house you wrote "exploded" every day and they can see that it wasn't more than a burning trash can. That's different on the national level: almost all of the audience isn't where the story is, so they can't verify personally. That allows for much more sensationalism without being regarded fake. And more sensationalism = more viewers = more money, so there's an incentive to go there.

That seems plausible, but there have been lots of news stories where every major outlet published an absurd sensationalist story which was objectively refuted by the story's own sources. Even here on HN years later people subscribe to (and will die on the hill for) the trivially debunked sensationalist interpretation. Two examples that come to mind are the [Covington Catholic fiasco][0] and the [Google "Diversity Screed" memo][1].

Besides, it's my perception that the news has become more sensational, and I certainly don't think it's accurate to say that the jobs of fact checkers have become more difficult (except in the sense that their superiors hamper them in some manner on account of the profitability of sensationalism, which is essentially my point).

I personally think there's some merit in the notion that we live in a post-truth world. Both the media and the POTUS feel comfortable lying quite overtly as though they understand that the value of credibility is at an all-time low. Academics in critical theory fields deride objectivity as fundamentally racist and talk about "other ways of knowing". Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like there's a sea-change in our values, especially as they relate to truth and integrity.

[0]: https://reason.com/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phil... [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/the-mos...

Local news is probably more likely to be relevant to peoples' lives. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with information about some politician's trip to Asia. Local stories are more likely to be actionable, in my life anyway. The local paper tells me about local matter that directly pertain to my life, like information about the city bus system changing their routes or rules for covid.

> Everyone in pretty much every field has a notion that making it to a national stage/level of your work means something more meritorious than just being #1 in your little town, don't they?

To be fair here, national level also implies a much larger target audience and therefore (usually) a larger reader/user pool. So this isn't totally out of the blue.

I would be curious to know if you actually do get to the NYtimes by being a great local reporter.

My gut feeling is that it would be that you'd sooner make it to the big leagues by leveraging an internship from an Ivy League credential.

But, I'm no journalist. Anyone know from where these outlets pull talent?

I don't know about that. If there are 5000 local news outlets and there are 50 national, then it's impossible that the national have correctly taken the cream and left the dregs. There are likely a greater number of local journalists just as good as the national journos --they just don't get the recognition and prestige or have the same vanity.

If national journos wrote stories anonymously, I doubt they would have the same inflated perception of themselves.

Disagree. National journalism is nowadays politically charged entertainment, sensationalism and fake news. Local journalism is more likely to be real news.