Over the summer, I procrastinated writing The Electric’s six anniversary post.

Then I put off writing my New Year’s post.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, or even if I wanted to keep doing this work.

Then I said I was going to channel all of my frustrations and thoughts into a Valentine’s Day love letter to local journalism.

But then I was running out of energy for that as my old dog was nearing his end and I wanted to focus on him.

Call it a cosmic sign, I suppose, that while I was scanning some news Tuesday night, I came across an NPR story with the headline “Grover the Muppet says he’s a report. Not for long, joke his beleaguered peers.”

My dog’s name was Grover.

The Muppet wasn’t his namesake, it was instead Grover Hall, a journalist who won a Pulitzer in the 1920s for his editorials in the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper criticizing the Ku Klux Klan.

Another cosmic sign, perhaps, that I didn’t name Grover. A friend of my roommate, and fellow reporter, had found him wandering the mean Alabama streets in Montgomery and named him. We worked at the Advertiser.

It seemed he was destined to be my dog.

And this week, it seemed he was destined to convince me to say a few things.

Grover, the Muppet, tweeted this week that, “As a news reporter, I always do my research before I break a story. I am confident to report that you are so special and amazing.”

I mostly quit X, formerly known as Twitter, some time ago, but apparently the blue monster’s tweet caused a firestorm among reporters. Some welcomed the Muppet to their ranks, some joked that the demise of journalism would come for him too.

Thousands of journalism jobs disappeared nationwide in 2023 and hundreds have been cut already this year.

It’s a dire situation for those in the industry, but it also has dangerous implications for our democracy, our civic life.

There are fewer journalists to help citizens learn about what’s happening around them.

There are fewer journalists to show up, ask questions and work to hold our public officials accountable.

There are fewer journalists to tell you when something is happening, regardless of our own opinions, so you have the chance to have your say in decisions being made in your communities.

There are fewer journalists to do the work, but we still get the hate mail, the mean social media comments, the harassment, the intimidation and the threats.

My favorite so far was a nearly incoherent email last spring that ended by telling me it was a bad time to sell my soul.

It took everything in me not to respond with “I’m a ginger, I don’t have a soul to sell.”

In my still fairly young career, it’s always been a tough gig. Often thankless, with long hours, pennies for pay and someone was always mad at you.

I turned 40 a few months ago, I’ve been doing journalism since working for my school newspaper in 8th grade, despite a few breaks here and there.

It’s not without incredible challenges that have only gotten harder.

I was a print girl for most of my career. My love of print runs deep, but the world has changed.

It changed when I was laid off from the Tribune and wasn’t sure what to do next.

After a few months of seeing the lack of local government coverage, I decided to take what was often my dad’s advice, “Don’t like it, do something about it and make it better.”

I created The Electric.

With no money, no investors, no advertisers, no staff, I put my years of training, my heart and what little I had into an experiment in local journalism.

I knew it was important and I took action.

This summer, The Electric turns seven. It grew to more than a million page views in 2023 and has loyal advertisers and subscribers that have helped me build a full-time job.

So it’s been disheartening, especially over the last year, to hear so often that journalism has disappeared in Great Falls just because the Trib has declined.

Personally and professionally, it’s always hard for me to hear that.

I get it, I really do, things have changed and The Electric doesn’t have a print edition currently, but there are still some great journalists in this town, working for very little money with very little support.

We also hear a lot of people who aren’t journalists saying that they are.

There’s no magic to being a journalist, but there is an extraordinary amount of work.

Journalism isn’t a personal diary.

Journalism isn’t politically motivated or swayed.

Journalism isn’t rumor and hearsay.

Journalism isn’t a compilation of press releases and fluffy features.

Drawing from my career, journalism is facts.

Journalism is vetting information with appropriate agencies and sources.

Journalism is reading public documents.

Journalism is sitting through countless public meetings.

Journalism is spending endless hours checking and double-checking information to report a story. Some take more effort and time than others.

Journalism is following up over and over and over again for days, months, sometimes years.

Journalism is sitting in living rooms of families who’s loved one was killed in combat and covering far too many military funerals.

Journalism is ride alongs for perspective on first responders and people in your community, and seeing death up close.

Journalism is spending hours talking to people working on mental health in jail and talking to inmates about their realities.

Journalism is meeting with fellow journalists and local emergency responders to talk about how we can all improve to better inform our community in times of crisis.

It’s not a perfect science. People are people. Some days we get it closer to right than others.

Some journalists are better than others, I won’t lie, but I have never known a journalist looking to get rich and famous.

The journalists I know work hard, because they love their communities and they seek truth.

Journalists will keep doing the hard work because it matters.

Please don’t take this as asking for high fives and pats on the back and atta girls.

Journalists don’t need that, though it’s nice to hear sometimes.

Journalists need action. They need the communities they serve to take the same action we have to help keep journalism alive.

Subscribe to their publications or email newsletters or social media feeds and fund them when you can.

Share their stories to help them better inform their communities and credit them when you do.

Say something when you see misinformation being shared.

And please, for the love of all things, read the story before commenting.

If you don’t do it for me or another journalist you love, do it for Grover, the Muppet, the journalist, my dog who took his last breath on Valentine’s Day. They were all very good boys.

I also asked fellow current and former journalists to share their thoughts. Here’s what they said.

Jo Dee Black

It’s been more than a couple of decades since Great Falls had breaking news delivered mid-day in a “special edition” newspaper being hawked from street corners. I haven’t planned my evenings around early or late news broadcasts in while. I rarely attend local government meetings.

But I’m in the loop about community issues, events, interesting neighbors, the comings and goings of local retail, restaurant and other economic development endeavors and much more. In fact, I’m rarely caught by surprise.

Thank you, Great Falls journalists and media outlets, who use new ways to deliver the news to me, keeping me informed, up-to-date and educated.

I worked at KSEN Radio in Shelby when it was owned by my late father-in-law Jerry Black. I worked at a weekly family-owned newspaper on the Hi-Line and later at the Great Falls Tribune. The investment of time, work, resources and skill development required to do the job of a community journalist well and do it right have always been underestimated by consumers and in my opinion, undervalued.

I appreciate that investment every time I read, listen to or watch a story about my home Great Falls, the Golden Triangle and Montana.

Local journalism improves our community, provides critical information, some great entertainment, promotes involvement by informed citizens, fosters collaboration and enhances our lives. It has to be supported through our subscriptions and advertising, just like all local business.

Thanks, appreciation for the investment, professionalism, accountability and work to responsibly bring us the news, should be offered a lot more.

So again, thanks to all you do Great Falls journalists.

Margaret DeMarco

A public information officer recently said to me that their job is to not only make sure the public is safe, but they are also there to report the facts. This has resonated with me since and as I write this love letter to local journalism; you will see how journalists hold to standard close to our hearts.

For those of us who have walked the halls of newsrooms across the country, we have been lucky because this is not just a career, it is a calling. I found that calling at the University of Northern Colorado, and I become a journalist when I accepted my first job in 2008. My career took me from Las Vegas, to Portland, to Denver, and right here to Montana.

Over the years, I helped cover the Occupy Portland Protests, the Clackamas Town Center Shooting, 50-year floods that devastated parts of Colorado, the Arapahoe High School Shooting, and the coronavirus pandemic. For these stories, there was a degree of separation, as I worked from a newsroom as a video editor or producer.

Every step I have made in my career has been with a purpose and every step I became more involved in the community I lived in. And that is why local journalists are so important to our community. Journalists are passionate and that passion grew when I became a multimedia journalist in Montana. This is when I saw how my work truly made a difference and helped make real changes for Montanans.

One of those stories, was Montana firefighter’s fighting for presumptive care legislation. When I put together the first story of the series, I had no idea the reach it would have. Over the next three years, I would travel across Montana to conduct interviews and talk to firefighters who were affected by not having this support. This is when I met Great Falls Fire Fighter Jason Baker. He became the face of the battle, as he was fighting stage four lung cancer. Sadly, Jason passed away before Governor Bullock signed the legislation into law in the Spring of 2019. If it was not for Jason, David Van Son, Joel Fassbinder, and the Montana firefighters who were willing to help me, the media coverage would not have gone as far as it did.

But the support I found with the firefighting community, also came with others who did not support the work that I did. People threatened to sue me over court stories, I was also threatened for not dropping a story, and recently I was called a hack for some of my coverage in Montana.

These things are not new to a journalism but life as a journalist has become more grueling over the years. For most, the calling still lives within us, but journalists are asked to do more with less. Newsrooms across the country are closing and communities are left without a journalist to hold their community accountable.

Without local journalism, the nation would of never heard about Ashley Loring Heavyrunner. She went missing on the Blackfeet Reservation in 2016 and so soon became the

face of the Missing and Murder Indigenous Women movement. She is still missing today.

Without local journalism, residents would not know about issues within there elections office. Jenn Rowell with The Electric first broke the story and has endlessly reported the facts. Now Cascade County has moved elections under commissioners and are in the process of hiring someone to oversee the elections.

I could keep going on but this is why local journalism is so important. Journalists are the game changes and the move makers. Journalist are not bloggers, they are out building relationships and getting information on important issues. So make sure you are supposing those who are willing to dedicate their lives to your community.