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It costs nothing at all to turn on free-to-air television, or flick on to your favourite radio station.
Yet we are paying a price as news organisations across regional Australia come to terms with a disrupted and complicated landscape in which to make money. And we may not realise the full cost until it is too late.
As of June 28, regional Australia will have five fewer newsrooms. You should not base your feelings about the closure of those WIN television offices on whether you like WIN, or whether it affects your region. It is a blow to regional Australia, full stop.
All news is local, but regional areas have known the value of community longer than most. Separated from state capitals by more than distance, regional Australians have always known why it matters to have a functioning and honest local council, that represents them and not some special interest. The very existence of many communities depends on it.
With every newsroom that closes, with every reduction of the number of journalists on the ground, fleecers, chancers and shysters will thrive. Sure as night follows day. Sometimes it seems like the ones waiting to rip you off are the only ones who truly understand the worth of journalism in the modern world.
Late night council meetings, community events, investment, growth and decline, misdeeds and good deeds, cops and robbers, heroes and villains - a good local journalist represents the heartbeat of a community, its sense of itself, the knowledge it needs to thrive or survive.
And it is being lost.
The commercial media landscape is built on a profit model, and those who own it should and do seek to make money. But we must evolve our understanding of worth beyond those margins. You do not judge your home solely on its market value. Nor the sense of community you feel when you gather with neighbours and friends and celebrate your little slice of this vast land.
We live in an age where we cannot take certain things for granted: politicians that work for us; the air we breathe; the surety of home.
You must support local journalism wherever and however you can, and you must ask your local governments what they can do as well. Cast a telling eye on those who refuse.
Glynn Greensmith is from the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University