I and the newsroom crew recently went out for drinks to celebrate our summer intern’s 21st birthday.

At one point in the evening, my senior reporter, Steve Schulwitz, started talking shop and detailing some tricks of the trade he’d learned over his years and years of reporting. All the youngsters turned to him and listened intently. It warmed my heart to see that.

And I really loved one of the things Steve had to say.

When something major happens in the world, Steve said, he goes as often as he can to the local news source at the site of the incident. He follows the local newspaper and local TV stations’ Twitter feeds and tries to find out who the local reporters are and follows them, too.

That way, Steve said, he gets better information more quickly than trying to follow the national media.

I follow Steve’s method, too, and for the same reasons.

Nothing against the national press, who I think do as good a job as they can, but they’re always going to be playing catch-up to the local press.

The local press know the area, know the players, know the history of whatever people, places, or things are affected by the news. They already have the police chief’s and fire chief’s cell phone number.

And, most importantly, they’re there already, giving them a leg up on the national press who have to fly reporters in.

I’ve seen the weakness of the national press firsthand on a number of stories over the years, but my first experience came during the Enbridge Inc. Line 6B oil spill in Marshall.

That spill — the largest inland spill in history — brought in press from all over the globe. I did more than one radio interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., that country’s version of National Public Radio.

They swooped into Marshall and Battle Creek like a swarm, filling up the seats at the daily press briefings put on jointly by Enbridge and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

They asked good questions and filed good stories, but their stories were just a little bit off. Not wrong, but just a little bit off.

The biggest discrepancy I can remember was in their description of the Kalamazoo River, which was not pristine even before Enbridge dumped all that tar sands oil into it.

The Kalamazoo River wasn’t widely used. Few kayakers, few swimmers, few anglers. There were better places in the Battle Creek area to do those things. The main place to swim in the river was at a county park, where my family often held family reunions. Every time you’d swim, you’d come out covered in leeches.

But the national press played it off like the whole community lost a treasure when the oil closed the river down.

The oil spill was horrible and devastating and there were plenty of reasons to call it a tragedy, but losing the use of the river wasn’t the main one.

The national press also reported on Enbridge’s lackluster safety record, but they neglected to report the important context that all of the major oil companies have pretty bad safety records.

And their descriptions of the towns and people affected by the spill were again not wrong but just a little bit off. I can’t provide any specific examples now, more than a decade later, but I remember their descriptions were like reading a movie version of my town, not the real one.

The biggest difference between what the Battle Creek Enquirer and Marshall Chronicle did and what the national press did is that we had three or four stories online and on the page before the national press even got to town.

And we covered more stories about the local impact. We reported that Enbridge was one of the biggest taxpayers in Calhoun County, for example. We reported on the entire apartment complex that had to close because the fumes from the oil made residents sick. We reported on the trailer park that refused to close and wanted to force its residents to keep paying rent even though they couldn’t stay in their homes.

All of our reports were deeper, more nuanced, and revealed more context than what the national press could pull off, coming into an unfamiliar town as they did.

The national press play an important role, and I follow them closely for their coverage of Washington and their investigative reporting on national issues.

But, the next time a shooting happens in some corner of the U.S. or a tornado touches down or a hurricane blows through, I’ll do as Steve does and turn to the local press first.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.