Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

Imagine a life in which mornings start by greeting your neighbors, flipping through headlines, overhearing conversations and positively engaging with public discourse. Instead, we live a life of scrolling alone, captivated by the doom of a news cycle that shares horrific issues and leaves us with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.

With the loss of print newspapers and newsstands as a shared space, this is the reality we face.

News consumption cannot be boiled down to a few simple steps; it is a complex interaction with information that shapes how we see the world, understand our communities and determine who and what is worthy of our attention.

Working through what we consume brings disagreements and controversy. However, rebuilding how we consume our news offers a more concerted path that can restore community, create a baseline for shared understanding and reinstate a once-beloved third space: newsstands.

It is no secret local newspapers have lost their traction, causing irreparable budget cuts, a loss in engagement and an overall collapse of traditional business models that have been replaced by the era of clickbait, curated algorithms and vulgar national news cycles. In its absence, polarization has accelerated, local issues lost visibility and the way we engage with our neighbors suffered. 

When a community engages with local news, they engage with quality journalism. Smaller newsrooms do not follow the same journalistic model that allows conflict to thrive; they were built on a standard to inform readers and advertise local businesses. The modern national model profits from big news corporations and bad acting influencers through monetized viewership on high-grossing platforms, using fear and demagoguery to keep itself relevant and profitable.

Though humans are wired to reward this capital-driven model, it is vital to the health of our democracy to fight this system by reinvesting in forms of journalism that seek to inform, not inflame.

Five years into the post COVID-19 world, communities are finally seeing civilians choosing to partake in physical spaces again. The comfort of our own homes and screens revealed their consequences, and the desire to engage publicly is becoming fashionable again. Local news companies need to aggressively take advantage of this upward trend by reintroducing newsstands and paperboys. 

Newsstands are casual gathering places. You can wake up, grab your morning paper, wave hi to a fellow reader and grab a cup of Joe with a print copy in hand. This small interaction allows a form of contact that is positive in the context of news, a form that we just don’t have anymore. It encourages face-to-face media engagement and conversation — you can’t hide behind a screen and rage — making it an obligatory physical interaction that breeds camaraderie.

If newsstands make these papers universal, we can steer away from personalized algorithms that only feed you what you want to see. Community interaction with the same headlines heightens shared awareness and creates a baseline that allows you to interpret information without anything telling you what to think. We encounter the news — it is not chosen for us. 

Nashville, Tennessee The Contributor is already doing this type of work, garnering success and recognition by implementing an intersectional, community-forward program. Their Vendor Paper Sales Program trains locals experiencing homelessness to be their own newsstands by purchasing copies of the paper and selling them to the public.

This program not only heightens visibility for their print, but it also gives back to community members, incentivizing vendors with a laid-out business model, a bus pass, a program to safely sell papers and housing opportunities. What was instated in 2009 has already helped over 4,100 people get back on their feet. 

Fort Collins is a city with great innovators and an increasing homeless population that needs attention. A program like this is completely feasible. With a large number of students, professors and community members who care, local journalism could be of great benefit. Because there is an interdependence in the base model of smaller newsrooms, the community needs them as much as they need readers.

Rebuilding local news cannot be framed in terms of going back; it must evolve with the changing needs of the people and the growing desire for proximity. It is vital to place information back into the physical spaces where communities actually exist — spaces where people can encounter it together rather than alone.

A newsstand, a paperboy: They model what the future of journalism can look like when it is rooted in the place, the people and shared experiences.