This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Getting out the neighborhood news

The news is there -- if you're willing to look.

You might not know it, but you're better-served with community information nowadays than you've ever been. The problem is, you have to do a little work to gather up what's out there for you.

The days of daily newspapers reporting on community events are long past unless something awful happens -- fire, homicide, armed robbery or multi-vehicle accident. The same is largely true of local TV news -- unless it's highly visual or panders to some sports or celebrity context.

Sure, if your parish priest is busted for embezzlement or child pornography, or if your president of borough council is led away in handcuffs, the first-line media will be all over it. The juicier the story, the more will the TV stations be out-shouting one another to claim they "broke the story" -- as if that's important.

Find out what's happening in Forest Hills-Regent Squarewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The fact is that nobody in big-media cares -- at all, in the slightest -- if your community upholstery shop just marked 30 years in business or if your municipal fire truck is falling apart or if your local senior center got a new furnace.

Daily newspapers and TV news stations do not actually function to inform their users about what's going on around them. They exist to sell advertising. Their version of "news" is the packaging they use in this pursuit.

Find out what's happening in Forest Hills-Regent Squarewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Fortunately, around here, there are very decent community publications -- Edgewood and Forest Hills, for example, are outstanding. People also get useful information from humbler sources like church bulletins, community bulletin boards, flyers and organizational newsletters.

Time is a big factor in news value. The eight-page Swissvale News shows up every two months. "Tree City Times" from Forest Hills, a 24-page beauty, is quarterly. But they're not really dealing with "news" so much as occurrences and developments.

If you want purely local news within 24 hours of its occurrence, your best bet is Patch.com. Patch actually reports who was snitching pork chops at Giant Eagle, whose tires were slashed on Greendale Avenue, and what those sirens were all about at 4 a.m. on South Braddock Avenue.

Patch reports on lost dogs and cats, and publishes readers' comments and theories about subjects as varied as municipal planning and baking recipes.

Disclaimer: I don't get paid to write about Patch. My writing is a consequence of a chronic personality disorder. But there are a couple of people somewhere in the Patch publishing chain who make a living at it.

Still, a lot of the material comes from non-professionals who simply have something to say about the place they live. How refreshing is that?

Patch has been around for just about a year and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people read it daily. Patch knows the number but they're not saying. However, many local politicians, business people, community activists and regular folks tell me they make Patch part of their day's information and, in some cases, part of their business.

The issue with Patch, of course, is that it's on-line. That's good in that you can read it from anywhere and participate from anywhere with your comments and blogs. If you're a technophobic luddite (or a babuska granny), that's not so good. Best to look for an energetic niece with some time after school and a new ink cartridge to print it out for you.

Like I said at the top: "you have to do a little work to gather up what's out there for you."

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