National news focuses on events and issues that have a nationwide impact. The national perspective allows journalists to engage with a more diverse audience and prioritize topics that resonate with the broader population.

Local news aims to inform and engage a specific community by focusing on issues that have relevance to their immediate surroundings. It focuses on holding institutions accountable and providing a voice to those that may not otherwise be heard.

The decline of local news outlets has had a significant impact on civic engagement at the community level. Residents are less informed about important issues such as city governance or safety. National news continues to dominate the media landscape, influencing public opinion and political decisions.

Often, national news is a combination of local and international stories that have a larger societal impact. These stories can include wars in which the United States is involved or summits of multilateral organizations to which the US is a member. This mix of local and international news can distort the context of stories by putting them in a partisan or sensationalized narrative that has little to do with factual case studies.

A journalist who specializes in national or foreign news is known as a correspondent. A correspondent is usually stationed in a country or region full-time and files stories to their news editor on a regular basis. Alternatively, a journalist can travel to different countries on assignment for multiple media outlets and be known as a stringer.