When it comes to “local news,” what’s local to you? Lots of e-mail that crosses my desk is devoted to that very personal - and sometimes emotional - question.

I hear it from sports fans who write things like, “You covered the Waterloo Black Hawks but only showed a goal by the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders. Why would you do that when you’re my local station?”

I hear it from news viewers who say things like, “You covered a Thanksgiving charity meal in Dubuque and another in Iowa City, but why didn’t you cover the one in my town.”

And I hear it from weather watchers who say, “Why can’t you go back to regular programming. The storm’s already gone through Waterloo.”

The driving force behind each of these comments is what’s “local” to the writer. The argument goes something like this: if it’s happening in my neighborhood or my town, it’s local. If it’s happening somewhere else, it’s not. The companion argument goes something like this: The station with main offices in my town is local. The other ones aren’t. I understand why some people feel this way. At the same time, it’s important for our customers to understand why we don’t see ourselves this way when we make coverage decisions. More precisely, why we can’t see ourselves that way. We’ll start with a little geography.

KWWL serves almost two dozen counties in eastern Iowa, all the way from the Minnesota border to the north, to Washington County to the south. Draw a big goose egg that includes Waterloo, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Now, throw in a couple of counties across the Mississippi River from Dubuque and you can really see the size of our coverage area. It’s huge. And to us, it’s all local.

That’s why we have newsrooms in three of the biggest cities in the area and why we have employees living and working in all four cities. Doing news this way is more difficult and expensive but it’s also necessary to serve our customers with their local news. Serving our customers well is the best way to drive up the number of people watching, which drives advertising revenue, which generates resources to help us serve our customers even better. Failing to serve has the opposite effect.

And it all comes back to establishing a “local” connection with customers - no matter where they live in our coverage area. That’s why we cheer for the Black Hawks and for the RoughRiders. It’s why we celebrate Dubuque’s successes and why we devote just as much time covering a tornado warning in Iowa City as we do covering a similar warning in Decorah or Washington. It’s where we draw the line on “local news.”

Jon Okerstrom
News Director

Posted under From the Corner Office