Good morning. Today we explain why so many locals don't know what is happening in our area. Also, WJCC schools study recognizing lacrosse as a sanctioned sport.
There are a couple of different trust issues being intertwined in some of these comments. There is the question of trust in the media, and there is trust in the government. I have found local news media usually play it straight. However, it is a fact that most journalists, like educators, come from a certain viewpoint and skillset that may impact what they cover. They don't usually feel comfortable doing financial analysis on government taxes, or questioning institutions like public schools or religion. Governments have put plenty of information out there, but it takes work to dig it up and it may not always reflect the other side.
I find it’s a bit like how parents go to schools and say we didn’t know about xyz and the schools have sent emails, flyers, made announcements etc and when parents ask their kid they say I dunno. Should the schools own that and take different approaches than just well parents do your job and teach your kids responsibility? Yes. Yes they should. Are parents also sometimes dropping the ball? Yes. Yes they are. It’s not a one size fits all and it’s not a one time solution. It’s an ongoing commitment to communicate and work together toward common goals.
Plus knowing what those goals are can be very different from understanding HOW Exactly we will achieve them because our methodologies may be in constant tension. having more opportunities for more people to learn what’s happening, contribute to ongoing developments that are of interest to them, and not engaging unhelpful finger pointing efforts are our paths forward. The Board of Supervisors have to have the tough skin of elected officials and do the work of listening and due diligence. They’ve had more town halls than I can remember having in 20 years. It’s a good thing.
Residents of JCc need to understand what’s happening here. It’s changing. Like it or not. Whatever brought and keeps you here is what brings and keeps others here. I got here in 2007 and never thought I’d be here now. But here we are. Things have grown exponentially and that means painful growth comes with it. We can’t pretend this area serves everyone or that it has always done so. Pay attention. Read the records. Understand how far this area has come and how very far it has not gone. There’s a lot to do to try to preserve what we all came here for while also asking ourselves about the reality of the future. Who deserves to live here? How do we continue to have the levels and quality of life we came here for and are we considering EVERYONE who makes that happen? Some people talk a lot and complain but in so doing reveal they only care that they still get their piece of the pie and screw anyone else- even those who are making the pie for them. JCC will not continue this way. It cannot. It will fail. Unless we address the issues we’re having and stop pretending doing nothing is going to work. 🤷🏻♀️ my two cents no one asked for. Thanks for coming to my Robin talk.
This is an article with critical content worthy of repeating & requires courage & skills that have diminished these day. I am grateful for your publication & share this with others to get to know W/W, & to subscribe / support. However, I deeply concur with persons comments on missing a power message on trust. To me, a report about where, how, whether reporting has changed is the news of the century today. Take the JCC Admin bld as a timely example. What stirred the public so dramatically. Was there a lack of material transparency &/or public outreach to inform & educate how a $50m project grew 400% in 4yr? What did people really know, when & how? Who thinks having a website is communication anymore? What facts or nonfacts catapolted this issue into an election platform in 2+ districts? Untold numbers say they did not know about the cost...but was it all truly apathy? IMO, no...but your the journalist & what a timely (for now) story that could be to mark W/W coming of age as the Walter Cronkite publication of the Triangle region....just thinking 🤔
Thanks for your work. This is why yours is one of the two substack publications I support. Sadly,though I have information and I sign petitions and I vote,I still feel pretty disenfranchised. If I were a wealthy woman I would support many substacks and make massive money donations to my favorite politicians.
You bring up an important item I left out. When people accuse the media of bias, they are usually talking about the large national newspapers or television/cable outlets. Local news stories usually were pretty straightforward, with no particular bias. Local newspapers may have carried wire stories from other outlets, but their local reporting has been fairly straight.
I tend to disagree with you. As you said above, locals picked their wire stories and when most were/are biased, it didn't leave much room for diverse opinion. Surely have caught WW a few times in the recent past! :)
That said, local news should concentrate on local things, and the more they do that, the better they are! (The Nextdoor app is not where you want to get your news!) LOL.
Along with WW, 1440 Daily is a great daily news notification if anyone is interested.
I agree with you. Local newspapers have been largely bought out by much larger enterprises who then insert mostly false narratives and stories which influence the reading audience in one direction or the other. I’m convinced that is the primary reason why so many have stopped reading decades-long propaganda and have chosen to get the news from alternative media sources which report more accurate news. Or worse, they don’t get any news worthy info because they don’t believe any of it now. We live in the days of deception.
Bread and circus has worked to keep the people distracted as we are lead to our demise. People don't care and have blindly given their trust over to strangers because it's America and we have grown comfortable thinking nothing bad could ever happen to us here. We think our "trusted" govt will take care of us. On that note, TRUST is the most important word used in your article. A lot of papers have failed in that area and have become propaganda machines. If they are real journalists we shouldn't have papers that are considered Left or Right, Conservative or Liberal. Report the facts/truth on the good, bad, and ugly of it all and let the people decide for themselves. As a 50 year old who never cared to read the paper, I love reading yours. I appreciate your fact-based, true journalism. Thank you!
PS I’m Gen X. We never trusted all y’all and guess what? We learned to always read anything out in front of us with healthy skepticism. Boomers used to sit around our dinner tables and complain about all of it: media, government, corporations, universities, the [insert race of others here] community, etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
LOL. Actually, there used to be a time when papers were labeled because of their editorial opinons, not the content of their news. Working to get us back there again.
I agree on the responsibility part. We're new to Williamsburg and I've found this publication very helpful. My adult son who lives here too recommended it. You're up against time and money constraints of many families/people obviously. It takes more time to read articles in any form than a screenshot message when already scrolling. Our communities are less likely to be organized around public places where having civil conversations happens naturally as part of being in the common place. And it's one more expense. I do consume my newspapers now through the county library online. It's a treasured resource. I live in a community with an HOA that affects every owner's value and yet, engagement remains low. I don't have the answers but I appreciate the call to action to find more ways to increase that engagement on all things we share in common!
There are a couple of different trust issues being intertwined in some of these comments. There is the question of trust in the media, and there is trust in the government. I have found local news media usually play it straight. However, it is a fact that most journalists, like educators, come from a certain viewpoint and skillset that may impact what they cover. They don't usually feel comfortable doing financial analysis on government taxes, or questioning institutions like public schools or religion. Governments have put plenty of information out there, but it takes work to dig it up and it may not always reflect the other side.
I find it’s a bit like how parents go to schools and say we didn’t know about xyz and the schools have sent emails, flyers, made announcements etc and when parents ask their kid they say I dunno. Should the schools own that and take different approaches than just well parents do your job and teach your kids responsibility? Yes. Yes they should. Are parents also sometimes dropping the ball? Yes. Yes they are. It’s not a one size fits all and it’s not a one time solution. It’s an ongoing commitment to communicate and work together toward common goals.
Plus knowing what those goals are can be very different from understanding HOW Exactly we will achieve them because our methodologies may be in constant tension. having more opportunities for more people to learn what’s happening, contribute to ongoing developments that are of interest to them, and not engaging unhelpful finger pointing efforts are our paths forward. The Board of Supervisors have to have the tough skin of elected officials and do the work of listening and due diligence. They’ve had more town halls than I can remember having in 20 years. It’s a good thing.
Residents of JCc need to understand what’s happening here. It’s changing. Like it or not. Whatever brought and keeps you here is what brings and keeps others here. I got here in 2007 and never thought I’d be here now. But here we are. Things have grown exponentially and that means painful growth comes with it. We can’t pretend this area serves everyone or that it has always done so. Pay attention. Read the records. Understand how far this area has come and how very far it has not gone. There’s a lot to do to try to preserve what we all came here for while also asking ourselves about the reality of the future. Who deserves to live here? How do we continue to have the levels and quality of life we came here for and are we considering EVERYONE who makes that happen? Some people talk a lot and complain but in so doing reveal they only care that they still get their piece of the pie and screw anyone else- even those who are making the pie for them. JCC will not continue this way. It cannot. It will fail. Unless we address the issues we’re having and stop pretending doing nothing is going to work. 🤷🏻♀️ my two cents no one asked for. Thanks for coming to my Robin talk.
This is an article with critical content worthy of repeating & requires courage & skills that have diminished these day. I am grateful for your publication & share this with others to get to know W/W, & to subscribe / support. However, I deeply concur with persons comments on missing a power message on trust. To me, a report about where, how, whether reporting has changed is the news of the century today. Take the JCC Admin bld as a timely example. What stirred the public so dramatically. Was there a lack of material transparency &/or public outreach to inform & educate how a $50m project grew 400% in 4yr? What did people really know, when & how? Who thinks having a website is communication anymore? What facts or nonfacts catapolted this issue into an election platform in 2+ districts? Untold numbers say they did not know about the cost...but was it all truly apathy? IMO, no...but your the journalist & what a timely (for now) story that could be to mark W/W coming of age as the Walter Cronkite publication of the Triangle region....just thinking 🤔
The opinion on your success with that Gazette is in your mind only. It was another liberal biased fish wrap
Thanks for your work. This is why yours is one of the two substack publications I support. Sadly,though I have information and I sign petitions and I vote,I still feel pretty disenfranchised. If I were a wealthy woman I would support many substacks and make massive money donations to my favorite politicians.
Excellent! I hope this message gets out to a wide audience.
Great opinion article! One part, I believe was also missing...trust.
For too many years, readers were only given slanted drivel that was not even close to factual journalism.
Society grew tired of wasteful narratives that were merely hen-picked and forced influential agendas - vice news!
Sadly, the $190 million government center story was often not the lead story...bologna stories proceeded it, and folks just stopped reading.
And so here we are now - getting news/stories from 30 sec vids and snippets - because we don't trust the media to give it to us straight.
It's on the shoulders of GenZ to get it fixed...while that is scary in many aspects...they can surely do it better.
I hope and pray they do!
Bring back Walter Cronkite and Make News Great Again!
You bring up an important item I left out. When people accuse the media of bias, they are usually talking about the large national newspapers or television/cable outlets. Local news stories usually were pretty straightforward, with no particular bias. Local newspapers may have carried wire stories from other outlets, but their local reporting has been fairly straight.
I tend to disagree with you. As you said above, locals picked their wire stories and when most were/are biased, it didn't leave much room for diverse opinion. Surely have caught WW a few times in the recent past! :)
That said, local news should concentrate on local things, and the more they do that, the better they are! (The Nextdoor app is not where you want to get your news!) LOL.
Along with WW, 1440 Daily is a great daily news notification if anyone is interested.
I agree with you. Local newspapers have been largely bought out by much larger enterprises who then insert mostly false narratives and stories which influence the reading audience in one direction or the other. I’m convinced that is the primary reason why so many have stopped reading decades-long propaganda and have chosen to get the news from alternative media sources which report more accurate news. Or worse, they don’t get any news worthy info because they don’t believe any of it now. We live in the days of deception.
Bread and circus has worked to keep the people distracted as we are lead to our demise. People don't care and have blindly given their trust over to strangers because it's America and we have grown comfortable thinking nothing bad could ever happen to us here. We think our "trusted" govt will take care of us. On that note, TRUST is the most important word used in your article. A lot of papers have failed in that area and have become propaganda machines. If they are real journalists we shouldn't have papers that are considered Left or Right, Conservative or Liberal. Report the facts/truth on the good, bad, and ugly of it all and let the people decide for themselves. As a 50 year old who never cared to read the paper, I love reading yours. I appreciate your fact-based, true journalism. Thank you!
PS I’m Gen X. We never trusted all y’all and guess what? We learned to always read anything out in front of us with healthy skepticism. Boomers used to sit around our dinner tables and complain about all of it: media, government, corporations, universities, the [insert race of others here] community, etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
LOL. Actually, there used to be a time when papers were labeled because of their editorial opinons, not the content of their news. Working to get us back there again.
Is there a difference btwn what op-Eds they run and their news? If they consistently offered multiple sides of any given issue?
I agree on the responsibility part. We're new to Williamsburg and I've found this publication very helpful. My adult son who lives here too recommended it. You're up against time and money constraints of many families/people obviously. It takes more time to read articles in any form than a screenshot message when already scrolling. Our communities are less likely to be organized around public places where having civil conversations happens naturally as part of being in the common place. And it's one more expense. I do consume my newspapers now through the county library online. It's a treasured resource. I live in a community with an HOA that affects every owner's value and yet, engagement remains low. I don't have the answers but I appreciate the call to action to find more ways to increase that engagement on all things we share in common!