Blog 2: Critical Community Information Sources

The most important community information source has to be the local newspaper. Columbia is lucky enough to have two local newspapers. The Missourian and the Columbia Tribune.

These publications are more important because although local broadcast news are extremely important in alerting the public about natural disasters and community problems, broadcast news have a difficult time critiquing public issues as well as following prolonged issues. Broadcast stations are unable to bring issues that happened months ago back into light without taking extra time to show old footage. Newspapers can really dive into a story and take it to the next step. They have more time to investigate into all the different sides. The in-depth reporting keeps all citizens fully informed on the important issues in the community.

The City of Columbia has an interactive website that includes City Government links and a great schedule that involves several facets of the community. However, it is slow to update and not accessible to all citizens of Columbia.

Columbia is also blessed with a plethora of students who are extremely excited to break the next biggest story. Columbia also has a good number of student blogs and student newspaper, the Maneater.

Columbia, although lucky to have many different news stories, isn’t organized enough to be dependent on these interactive sources. Local newspapers are still the the easiest news source for every citizen to use as well as the easiest to disburse throughout the entire town.