Viva Diario

As the world turns to a virtual community, citizens are turning to online publications for their news. All major news corporations have created websites to fulfill their obligations to the tech-minded citizen. Blogs and online broadcasting radio programs are a click away to news events and opinionated articles. But local newspapers are making their own efforts to reach a broader audience as to not fall to the wayside.

Newspapers date back to hundreds of years ago, but a form of community information boards go back as far as Ancient Rome. The information boards served to inform the community of political and economical news. Much like the boards of yesteryear, the modern newspaper does the same. The decline in circulation, of late, means citizens are turning elsewhere for their information. Newspaper companies, however, are acting with those citizens in mind. Online publications, e-newsletters and mobile streaming are three new media outlets Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel has acted upon to attract the otherwise disinterested citizens.

Art Silverblatt wrote about the reasons citizens read the local newspapers-thoroughness, local awareness and social extension. Now Silverblatt may not be the end-all be-all media literate, but he does make a great point about the existence of print media. Individuals in a democracy deserve to be informed. Local newspapers, such as the Journal Sentinel, thoroughly inform the Milwaukee community.

Civic Culture tends to create a guideline for media outlets in a democracy. Consiously or subconsiously, citizens turn to media outlets that obey the four components of civic culture, which are practices, knowledge, principles and identities. Local newspapers alliance with their respected community tends to define their principles as informative, non-bias and direct. As long as newspapers maintain thier loyalty, citizens will turn to them for information. The Journal Sentinel sends out more than 200,000 copies daily. In a city of half-a-million, the Sentinel is far from dying off.