PAONCO, In 1972, Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse...

In 1972, Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse followed around Apple, Broder and the rest of the Boys on the Bus, writing how the pack “began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories.” In the evening, reporters would talk out the defining moment of that day, the key line, and file their stories often repeating that narrative for the next day’s edition of the Chicago Tribune or Baltimore Sun. With the exception of a few national agenda-setting publications, like the Times and Post, reporters on the campaign trail primarily wrote for their local audiences.

Now political reporters are usually writing for the world, and the pack has evolved into a hive, constantly buzzing with the latest updates from the trail published via iPhones and BlackBerrys.

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Michael Calderone (via soupsoup)

PAONCO’s take:

Working in military Public Affairs is sometimes complicated because you are covering a lot of things that have national and international interest but your audience is often very local in nature. It is important to remember that the people you are covering and the events they are involved in matter most to people at a local level. Towns most people have never heard of like Killeen, TX, Waynesville, MO or Rapid City, SD are where we and our families live. These are the communities that we serve. So it doesn’t matter if the story is on the drawdown of troops in a war zone or a local training exercise, at the very basic level these are the audiences for which you should be writing. Keeping “local first” in mind will not only help you do better stories it will also help you accomplish your larger mission of keeping the public informed.