On Friday, Aug. 8, in a departure from our traditionally scheduled programming, the marketing and internship coordinator for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (PNA) Chris Kazlauskas, interviewed me on G-town Radio, 92.9 FM.

Kazlauskas has been with PNA for nearly 28 years, working to support local journalism. In his current role, he interviews active members of the association and writes a monthly profile. When he reached out to ask if he could interview me for his August installment, I suggested we “kill two birds.”

That’s how we came to spend an hour together speaking about all things local journalism.

This year, PNA turned 100. Since its inception, it has been a member association dedicated to providing legal, advocacy, marketing, training, and networking opportunities and assistance. The association also provides financial grants and hosts contests, many of which the Local has entered (we’ve even won a few).

“We call ourselves NewsMedia because we know [journalism has] expanded beyond just print,” Kazlauskas explained. “We’re carrying this torch for over 100 years now ... to speak truth to power, covering everything from school boards to local governments, state government. … It’s very important to keep citizens informed.”

Kazlauskas wanted to keep PNA members informed about the Local’s work, which is why he invited me to speak with him about my professional background, the challenges faced by local journalism, and the work of the Chestnut Hill Local. Typically, on G-town Radio, I’m the one asking the questions, but our on-air conversation offered me the opportunity to be in the “hot seat.”

Kazlauskas asked about my path to the Local, and I told him I left a career in finance to become a writer and yoga teacher only to stumble into journalism and work as a journalist for 15 years. After that, I applied for a job at the Local after reading an ad for a business growth officer. I had no expectations of being promoted to publisher, but the role seemed to fit with my business and financial acumen and passion for journalism.

As I said on-air, promoting me to publisher was a wise financial move considering that (for a little while anyway) The Lenfest Institute for Journalism covered part of my salary. I won’t recap the whole story here, but if you would like to listen to the full interview, it’s available at chestnuthilllocal.com. Click on “A Local Lens.”

My favorite moment came when Kazlauskas’ asked me to describe our about community. I said, “Even though our name is the Chestnut Hill Local, we’re a 67-plus-year legacy news organization, and we’re never gonna change our name. We’re owned by the Chestnut Hill Community Association; we have expanded our footprint of service. So, we serve Southeast Montgomery County and Northwest Philadelphia. I really believe that there are distinct microcommunities within those larger communities, and yet they have a lot of overlapping interests and intersections. ... It is our civic responsibility to educate the residents of those areas about what is happening, issues of concern, events, meaningful projects in the community, noteworthy individuals, life stories, obituaries, etc.”

At the heart of the Local is the community we serve and the scrappy, relentless, invested staff that gets a paper out every week, not to mention a quarterly magazine, a twice-yearly entertainment guide, and independent print products others outsource to us.

“There’s a lot of under-resourced newsrooms,” I said, “and I include ourselves in that. The Chestnut Hill Local is under-resourced, yet we manage to do a lot.”

Many studies that have come out about how, in the absence of a journalistic outlet that’s doing comprehensive local news coverage, political corruption flourishes and there’s no accountability. We’re doing old-school journalism, in which we take both sides of an issue into consideration, make every effort to get sources with contradictory viewpoints, and try to get as much factual data as possible.

Having the opportunity to speak about the Local’s work was heartwarming, as was sharing about our recent second-place win for PNA News Organization of the Year and the many awards garnered by our advertising, editorial, and production teams for their creativity, innovation, and dedication to the news industry. My conversation with Kazlauskas made me even more excited about community journalism.

If you have questions for Kazlauskas, or would like to learn more about PNA, visit panewsmedia.org or contact Chris Kazlauskas at Chrisk@pa-news.org.

Stay tuned next month when I’ll be back on G-town radio at 9 a.m. on Friday Sept. 12, speaking with Abby Weiss, the Local’s new environmental reporter!

Daralyse Lyons can be reached at Daralyse@chestnuthilllocal.com.