I watched the film Spotlight on a plane. It’s a meticulous and bleak portrayal of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the coverup of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Massachusetts, USA.

As much as I enjoyed the film’s portrayal of investigative journalism, I was most moved when at the end of the movie a list of names scrolled down the screen — places where the Church’s sexual abuse had been revealed, usually by local journalists. It was an incomplete list considering what we know now, but it featured places from Ngong, Kenya to Feilding, New Zealand.

I’ve heard often that local journalism is becoming extinct. There is truth to this. In the last few months, hundreds of jobs have been lost in journalism across the world, at places like Gannet (a local news conglomerate in the US), Stuff’s community reporting roles in Auckland, and in digital outlets like BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Vice New Zealand.

In small places like Feilding, as well as in many other dots on the map whose names have never appeared in the credits of movies, the services the local newspaper once offered — announcements, classifieds — have been replaced, if at all, with neighbourhood Facebook pages or online retail sites. The business conglomerates that own the papers decide it is easier and more “economic” to focus on global and national news which is broadly of interest to everyone, than on local news, which can make such a difference to smaller groups of people.

For all the talk of a globalised world, the specific place where we live is still important. Our day-to-day interactions with others in our communities affect our lives more than distant, even frightening, political machinations at a large scale. And for all the flaws of the media industry, what it does best — investigation for the truth and (thoughtful) interrogation — are needed to hold those in power to account.

It’s not just sexual abuse, of course. Local journalists can call local politicians to account. For every Watergate or Dirty Politics, there are many cases of misappropriated council funds and small-scale extortion schemes uncovered and reported on.

It seems that the media landscape is shifting rapidly and that’s alarming. I don’t know how to fix it. It doesn’t feel like there is much that I can do. I just read journalism (somewhat voraciously), and, to be honest, I probably follow international and national news much more closely than local news. Perhaps this is because I feel slightly unmoored at this stage of my life, more attached to a large world than to a specific corner, washed between continents.

Journalism can help orient me in this enormous world. Church can do that, too. It may be a massive and problematic institution snarled now in layers of scandal, but at its heart is the Gospel. Each week it invites me to be anchored to a particular corner, a particular community.

I think God demands, in many ways, that we pay attention to the world — to places and spaces of staggering beauty and also of tragedy and poverty — at the global scale and at the local. Acknowledging the whole spectrum better motivates us to act in the world. And at its best the Church supports and equips us — to end injustice, to respect and protect all people, to be a voice for the poor, to care for Earth. Journalism, by informing, laying out the truth, describing situations, can do the same.

It is right to mourn the current devaluing of journalism and for the Church ravaged by sexual abuse. It reminds me not to get mired, to pay attention to the large picture and also to the small and local. I accept the invitation to be attached, and receive bountiful new understandings.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 235 March 2019: 27