Let’s talk about something that happened this week in our office, first of all because it seems to happen all too often in today’s world when it comes to headlines and those readers on social media we often refer to as keyboard warriors and secondly, I think it gets to the very heart of what local journalism is — and what it absolutely, positively is not and should not be.
On Wednesday, we ran a straightforward news story about an emergency response to a house fire right here in Folsom. When our firefighters arrived on scene, they discovered something important: the home utilized a large-scale lithium battery energy storage system — one of those inverter setups that helps power the house. Because of that discovery, our first responders had to take extra precautions, both for their own safety and for the safety of anyone nearby. They also had to account for the toxins present in the smoke. That’s not opinion. That’s not commentary. That’s not some dramatic reenactment with ominous music. That’s just what happened.
We published the facts. Simple enough, right? Well, not so fast. Shortly after the story went live, a local resident took to our social media page and accused us of using scare tactics against people who have lithium battery systems in their homes. She demanded we post a follow-up about how the fire started and suggested we were being irresponsible with our reporting.
Now, I want to address this directly — not to pick a fight with one reader, because honestly, I think she spoke for a much broader sentiment I encounter more and more these days. And it’s worth talking about.
Here’s something I’ve learned in this line of work: When we cover the news, we don’t get to curate a soothing, aromatherapy-scented experience designed to tiptoe around every individual sensitivity. That’s not how this works.
The news is not a warm blanket. It’s not a cup of chamomile tea.
Sometimes the news is scary. Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, angry or confused. And sometimes — and this is the part people forget — it’s that very discomfort that prompts us to ask better questions, take sensible precautions or simply become more informed about the world we actually live in.
Imagine you drive a Toyota Camry. One day, we report that someone driving a Toyota Camry had a catastrophic brake failure and was involved in a terrible accident. Are we trying to scare you into thinking your brakes are about to fail? No. We’re reporting what happened. Your car is not that car. Your brakes are not those brakes. One is a news event. The other is your personal anxiety. The two are not the same thing, and we have to stop confusing them.
Let’s go bigger. The weather service issues a severe thunderstorm warning. We publish it. The storm passes through and nothing terrible happens. Did we fearmonger? Were we being dramatic? No. We shared a warning from meteorologists whose job is to tell us when conditions could become dangerous. If someone reads that warning and feels a spike of anxiety, I genuinely sympathize — but the solution is not to stop publishing weather warnings.
We have, as a culture, become extraordinarily sensitive. I see it constantly across our platforms.
“This story upsets me.”
“This story makes me scared.”
“Why would you post this?”
“Can you take this down?”
And listen, I understand the impulse. I really do. The world can feel overwhelming. The news cycle can be relentless. Sometimes you’re just trying to drink your morning coffee and scroll in peace, and then suddenly you’re confronted with a house fire, a car crash or a city council decision that makes your blood pressure rise. I get it. I live here too.
For some readers, those stories may even be triggering. That’s understandable. But the existence of a trigger doesn’t eliminate the existence of the story. The fire still happened. The crash still happened. The vote still happened. Our responsibility is to report reality, not edit it to fit everyone’s comfort level.
But here’s the flip side: the solution isn’t to shoot the messenger. The solution isn’t to demand that local news outlets only publish stories that feel like a hug. Because if we ever got to that point — if every story had to pass a “will this upset anyone?” test — we wouldn’t be journalists anymore. We’d be greeting card writers. And while I do enjoy a good greeting card around the holidays, that’s not the job.
What we strive to do at Folsom Times — and I’ll say this plainly because I believe it with my whole chest — is counterbalance the hard news with an enormous amount of good. We publish local features, community events, entertainment coverage, business stories and profiles of people making a difference. We spend an enormous amount of time highlighting the positive things happening in this community because they matter.
But none of that changes the fact that we are still a news organization.
When something important happens in our community, we are going to cover it. Not because we want to scare you. Because it happened. Because it’s information. Because awareness matters.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret — something that I think gets lost in the shuffle of modern social media consumption. It’s a simple, almost radical idea, and it goes like this:
You don’t have to read it.
I mean that sincerely. If you read a headline and feel that a story may upset you or simply not be something you want to engage with, you — as a human being, as an American citizen, as a person with a functioning thumb capable of scrolling — have the absolute freedom to scroll right past it.
Move along. Find something that does suit your mood. Read about the new bakery opening up the street. Check out the weekend event guide. That’s allowed. That’s encouraged. Not every story is for every person, and that’s okay.
What’s not okay is demanding that we sanitize reality so no one ever has to feel a twinge of discomfort. Because here’s where that road leads: a world where no one knows about the house fire, the brake failure or the storm warning — not because those things didn’t happen, but because someone, somewhere, might feel uneasy reading about them.
That’s not a safer world.
That’s a less informed one.
Reporting facts is not fear-mongering. It’s journalism. It’s what we signed up for.
So here’s the bottom line: We won’t be fazed by the accusation that reporting facts is somehow an attack. We won’t apologize for doing our jobs. And we won’t stop covering the news simply because a particular story may upset a particular reader.
If we started down that road, where would it end? Every story upsets somebody. Every topic touches a nerve somewhere. Before long, we’d be left with nothing but a weekly roundup of cute dog photos. And look, I love cute dog photos — honestly, send them my way — but that can’t be the whole paper.
To the reader who shared their displeasure with our coverage: your comment did not go unnoticed. While we respect your right to disagree with our reporting, we stand by the story and the facts it contained. The reality of local journalism is that not every story will be welcomed by every reader, and we have long accepted that fact. Our job is not to make everyone happy; it is to inform the community about what is happening in it. We also reject the suggestion that reporting factual information constitutes a scare tactic. Quite simply, it does not. There is no benefit to us in creating fear, and that has never been our mission.
And to everyone else: Thank you for being here, for reading, for engaging, and for understanding that local journalism — real, honest, sometimes-uncomfortable local journalism — matters. Even when it doesn’t feel like a warm blanket. Especially then.
Bill Sullivan is the co-founder/owner of Folsom Times, a digital product of All Town Media LLC in Folsom.
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