When I was a child, I loved to listen to stories. I was lucky to be surrounded by interesting story tellers. Many people in my immediate family can spin quite a yarn; making even the most mundane events sound interesting.

At family events, one person would tell about something that had happened to them and others would pick that story up, repeat it over and over again throughout the years until those tales became family legends.

Since the dawn of time cultures have used stories to define their history, values, customs and traditions. Looking back, I can see how important those family stories were in the formation of my identity and my understanding of the world around me.

So, it is no surprise that I grew up to pursue a career in journalism. I believe that shared stories are what keep our community together — in fact, what defines us as a community and gives us our humanity. Inside our heads, we each create a narrative that helps us learn to navigate this reality. It is only through sharing our perspective that we can come into true communion with others and create an emotional connection.

I am deeply honored to be able to talk to you and tell your stories. I enjoy listening to you talk and asking you questions to satisfy my curiosity. I try to do my best to accurately represent you and give a voice to those unheard whenever possible. I don’t take this responsibility lightly, nor does anyone here at The Bradford Era.

I believe that the press is essential for a small community like ours. Things like townwide celebrations, high school sporting moments, and even local crime stories are all woven into the fabric that creates our community.

Yes, you may be able to get information from Facebook, but what is the quality level of that information? Who is going to fact-check that infographic about local fracking before they hit repost except for a trained journalist or editor?

Now, with the rise of AI, it will only become more important for us to have trained media professionals who can assess the difference between something created by humans and something created by machine.

So remember to be kind to the people who tell your stories. Local newspapers are a record of the DNA strands that become our culture.

(Savannah Barr is a reporter at The Bradford Era. She can be reached at s.barr@bradfordera.com.)