In June, West Side Rag published a story about a weird guy bothering women at a local cineplex. The Rag is an independent online newspaper that has covered street-level goings-on in my neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper West Side since 2011. Its story topics range from profiles of fresh political contenders to galleries of historical UWS photographs to rumors about new bagel shops. But something about the movie-pest story really struck me: it’s a good extremely-local news story, of the kind I remember growing up with in the previous century, reading in the local paper or watching on the local evening news, to name two things that don’t really exist any more in much of the country.

It’s well-sourced, with statements from multiple women as well as a movie theater representative, all told directly to the reporter instead of just lazily plucked from social media. (The reporter did discover the story through social media, and says as much, but then contacted people directly for comment.) It’s about a local institution that I’m quite familiar with, and whose relevance is limited strictly to the local community. And, yes, it centers on a frisson of lurid danger, but in this case I came for the Ew, gross and stayed for the Um… this… this is a very good news story, there used to be so many like this, where did they go, and this feeling has lingered well after the credits have rolled by and the lights have come up.