I’m what some would call a “news junky,” one of those strange creatures that lurks about their home, before the first cup of coffee is finished, checking the headlines. I listen to it on my radio any time I’m in the car, I read and write about it all day and I watch on TV and even in films.

To some extent, the disease makes sense – after all, a journalist should be immersed in the news if he aims to share it with any prowess – but it’s incredible how it penetrates every moment of my day.

On my way to the office Tuesday morning, I had the good fortune of hearing a research report on the way a local newspaper impacts the town it serves, not just in the obvious ways but economically as well.

According to the report, towns that no longer have a newspaper end up paying for it in the form of more expensive loans to the city – which is to say that towns looking to invest in local projects are forced to borrow at a higher interest rate if they don’t have a local newspaper.

The report claims that this is because lenders are wary of lending to a local government that isn’t under the watchful eye of a hometown periodical – a local government not being watched by the local press is more likely to engage in bad behavior and, thus, it’s not as reliable of an investment as a town with a thriving press.

In a very real way, a thriving local newspaper is indicative of a thriving town and that newspaper provides the town, as well as those entities looking to invest in the town’s expansions, with a sense of security and unification.

In one town, the difference in having or not having a local newspaper was literally embodied in the health of children – the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, which was forced to close its doors after nearly 150 years, was in the process of researching electronic waste being sent overseas when its operations shuddered.

Some of its reporters independently investigated the story two years after the newspaper’s closing and found countless accounts of children being sickened with lead, both overseas and here at home.

While it’s easy to think of the work of the local press as some outdated method of news gathering and dispersal, it’s a fact that there are often times no other avenues for knowing what’s happening in your own backyard without the work of your local press.

But not only is the local newspaper essential to the people of a community, so they know all of the goings on in their hometown – the good and the bad – it turns out it’s just as good for the inanimate city itself.

It’s science.