I have a bit of a confession to make. My copies of the Democrat turned into a pile on my kitchen counter this past month. What can I say? Fall is a busy season for photographers. But when I finally settled on my couch this weekend to play catch-up on several weeks of news, I couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder at all that my colleagues here at the paper do on a daily basis. They go out, and they cover stories that matter. A vote that would decide the future of two entire school districts. A tussle on the county legislature. A new medication clinic for people fighting addiction in Monticello.

You won't read about these things in the New York Times or see them on Good Morning America because these are small town issues, not national ones. That doesn't mean the issues are any less important to the people they affect. I've long bristled at the notion that it's only the stories you read in the nation's top papers or see on the nation's top TV channels that are worth being told, or indeed that it's the journalists on staff at national publications that have "made it." At times I've been asked if I'd rather be working for the Times, questions that make clear the one asking doesn't see the value that comes from local news. Perhaps because local news is always there, it's also often taken for granted that it will be. Imagine if the local journalists all ran off to the Times? Imagine if they didn't see the value in the attending local town board meetings and following up on leads just because they're ... local? Where would local communities be then? Without local journalists, local news doesn't stop being made, but it does stop being covered. Parents and homeowners in a small school district don't know the issues they need to grapple with before voting. Taxpayers in a county don't know what their elected officials are doing, what decisions are being made in the government center in their names. People in the clutches of a disease that is destroying their lives do not find out about the options for help that are out there, nor do families who need their support. Pouring through the pages of my piles of papers this weekend, I learned all these things and so much more. And I made a reminder for myself: Don't let your papers pile up in the corner. Because local news matters, and I need to be continuously grateful for the people who do the hard work to ensure it's still accessible.