The Pacific Standard is a well-respected publication supported by the Social Justice Foundation that often attempts to tell human stories without the shadow of biased media.
Last week, the publication released a compilation of quips from correspondents in each of the 50 states, Washington D.C. and the U.S. territories that act as windows into the issues fellow Americans are facing.
The presentation and writing of the piece itself was beautiful, but like all truly great pieces of journalism, it exposed a deeper issue that is often overlooked. We don’t really know how everyone else is doing. And for the most part, we don’t really seem to care.
While reading through the piece, I found myself stopping in awe to ponder how states as far flung and different from us as Hawaii deal with weighing development of research facilities against preservation of public lands in similar ways that we do. At the same time, I found it difficult to believe that Montana dealt with a crippling cyber-attack that closed schools and threatened students and faculty. It just didn’t make sense that our neighbors could be affected by something so remote and alien to someone who mostly resides within Idaho’s bubble.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
Every state and every community deals with this kind of isolation from the rest. It’s perfectly natural to not care about the issues others deal with, especially if they live three time zones over. We have to care and pay attention, in spite of that.
We can’t just pay attention when there’s another disaster or another big issue. There are obvious benefits to staying informed on smaller issues that might escape the national news radar. When traveling or even relocating, it is much easier to get comfortable when you at least have an idea of what controversies the locals are facing. Understanding a few local issues can help connect the dots at a national level and see how local news grows.
Many states and cities go through the same problems that could be avoided if we paid closer attention to how others dealt with those problems in the past. Idaho is dealing with an influx in population growth the state has never seen before, and there are plenty of examples of what not to do if we pay attention to our neighbors and fellow communities.
If nothing else, listening in to other states’ issues affords the opportunity to find new needs to consider. I didn’t know that New Jersey had jumped from 48th to 19th in the nation for free and reduced meal support in schools after decades of neglect. It would be ridiculous to expect similarly niche issues to make it to the national media, and the only way to keep up is to make active efforts to check in with our neighbors.
We are a large nation with so many different cultures, it would be easy to say that Georgia’s problems are not ours to worry about. We could say that we don’t need to care about land usage issues in New Mexico because we have no noticeably direct connections there. But in reality, we do.
Against all the odds, we are still united as a nation and our national identity grows a lot stronger if we somehow manage to care about each other. Yes, that means more effort. Yes, that means taking time out of the day to read a little more and listen a little longer. It’s all worth it when it brings us together.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or