Following Chapel Hill news from out of town.....

Local news that interests us, individually, does not cease to be of interest even though we may be out of town. It's a little like the tree falling in the forest and does it make a sound if no one is listening? Well, news happens whether we are in Chapel Hill and neigboring communities or not.

Each of us probably has come up with our own way of doing this, and I hope to expand my experience to include those of others.

Even when I am in Chapel Hill, I find it a challenge to follow the local news of interest to me. I read newspapers, visit websites, subscribe to e-mail and try to keep my ears open. Even with all that, I miss a lot sometimes briefly and sometimes forever.

When I am out of town, my choices are considerably reduced and I am reliant on someone contacting me by one communications tool or another to tell me some news and the internet - both for those e-mail subscriptions and for websites.

Studies show over and over again that most of us are most interested in the news closest to us geographically. (Sure, big news from elsewhere in the US and around the world can catapault into a position of great importance, but day in, day out, it is the local stuff that touches us in some way that always seems to be the most important to most people.

I live in Southern Village. How do I follow any news relating to Southern Village, downtown Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, the three places most local to me? Each of us has our own definition of news and that will be clearer after you look at the list below; some of the sources on the list may surprise you!

There is no one solution that does the job, but here are some that I have tried and some that I continue to use. I'll start the list (not necessarily in order) now and come back and add more and some comments on each:

• Chapel Hill News
• Herald-Sun
• Carrboro Citizen
• WUNC
• Chapel Hill Wine Shop
• Carolina Inn
• Acme
• The Independent
• Chapel Hill Magazine
• News & Observer (The best option on the website is to go to the Orange County section; most, if not all, of the Chapel Hill stories that appear in the N&O are accessible here.)
• Southern Neighbor
• Daily Tar Heel
• Southern Village Listserv
• Sally GREENE
• Chapel Hill Town Listserv
• A Southern Season
• Google News
• The New York Times (I have chosen "Chapel Hill" as one of the key words that triggers an e-mail link; I have rarely seen any local news via this route of intense interest to me.)

Some general comments:

• It has been a long time since I recall getting a news "alert" related to Chapel Hill that I considered to be local news important to me.