A broad, independent press has always been essential to human freedom. When many voices compete, citizens gain a more honest understanding of the world. To see why, consider a grim hypothetical: imagine if, in the early 1800s, a conglomerate of slaveholders joined forces to create thousands of newspapers, using them to justify and defend slavery. They then used the money from these papers to buy out or put out of business, other independent media sources, censuring all of them to create a fictional idea of the virtues of slavery. Fortunately, in our timeline what really happened was that thousands of abolitionists risked their safety and spent their own money to expose slavery’s brutality through books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Work which would have been impossible under a media monopoly.

Now consider a different scenario — one not hypothetical at all. Forty years ago, about 50 companies owned 90% of U.S. media. Today, just six corporations control that same share. Six companies determine what the vast majority of Americans read, watch, and hear. Some may soon merge, concentrating power even further. If concentrated media power was alarming in the 1800s — and it would have been catastrophic — why should we shrug at it now?

The coming of the internet has only deepened this dilemma. On one hand, it has gutted the business model of local newspapers. In times past, most papers gained most of their revenue from subscriptions, papers and magazines delivered to your front porch by entrepreneurial neighborhood kids. As readers migrated to free, bite-sized content on social media, smaller papers were forced to downsize or be sold out to corporate chains. Now more dependent on advertising for their income, all outlets today risk financial devastation for publishing stories that anger sponsors or fall prey to cultural cancellation, limiting their ability to publish necessary stories that may upset one political side or the other.

On the other hand, the internet has empowered independent voices. A single journalist can now reach millions from a laptop, free from printing costs and gatekeeping editors. Blogs, newsletters, and video platforms have opened new lanes for truth-telling and accountability, allowing many individual and independent reporters and investigators to keep even the largest billion-dollar media organizations in check. That is, if audiences are willing to seek them out.

Unfortunately, most of the benefits of internet based independent media get lost on what is most important and influential in our lives. We consume national news the way we watch sports or reality TV, cheering for our “side” and forgetting that the most important decisions — the ones that shape our daily lives — happen locally. What our schools teach, how our cities are planned, which roads are built or ignored: these issues rarely make cable news, but they define our communities, much more than what some senator in DC or a New York based political pundit most recently tweeted. And without independent local media, they go uncovered, unnoticed, and unchallenged.

That is why an informed citizen must do more than scroll and skim.

Because a free press is not something a nation “has.” It is something its people maintain. And if we don’t invest in the diversity of voices that once made America the most literate, self-governing society on earth, we will wake up to find that six corporations, or possibly even less, now speak for 330 million of us.

A nation that forgets how to question power, will learn what it’s like to live under it.

Jonathan F White is a Utah native living in Saratoga Springs, a father of four and a concerned citizen.