Listening, answering, connecting: How Michael Long’s Watchdog journalism serves Lancaster County

For Michael Long, journalism isn’t just about reporting the news, it’s about answering to the people who live here.

At LNP | LancasterOnline, Long helps lead the Watchdog team, a reader-driven corner of the newsroom where questions from the community serve as a starting point for reporting. It’s a role that sits at the intersection of accountability, curiosity and service—values that, for Long, are deeply rooted in Lancaster County itself.

“We have a Watchdog email address where anyone in Lancaster County who has a problem, or something they don’t understand, can contact us,” Long said.

Sometimes those questions are practical. Sometimes they’re deeply personal. Often, they’re both.

Long recalls an email from an 81-year-old woman in Mountville who was puzzled and frustrated by a disparity in cost-of-living increases.

“She said, ‘Hey, Governor Shapiro just got a 3.3% cost of living increase. I’m looking at my Social Security check, and I only got a 2.8% increase. Why is that?’”

To answer her question, Long pressed the state and federal legislators who control those raises, and the woman’s question ultimately generated two Watchdog columns, an independent editorial and lots of reader feedback.

“It’s our job to explain issues to readers and help them have a voice with people who are disconnected from them,” he said. “To connect their concerns to the people who have the power to do something about it.”

That connection is at the heart of Watchdog journalism. Even seemingly small issues can reveal larger gaps in how systems work, or don’t.

A woman in Lancaster City, for instance, who has mobility issues and handicap parking privileges recently wrote to the Watchdog team after Lancaster Parking Authority ignored those privileges and ticketed her for overtime parking. She spent months fighting a ticket that should never have been issued, to no avail.

After the Watchdog team stepped in, the parking authority admitted its mistake, apologized to the woman and vowed to better train its employees so that no one else would experience the same problem.

Other stories have had an even greater impact.

Long points to a Watchdog story by reporter Jade Campos about a senior citizen, Edna Amaro, who was facing eviction after her building was sold and rents increased beyond what she could afford.

“She literally was going to be put out on the street,” Long said.

After the story was published, LNP | LancasterOnline readers responded quickly, raising more than $20,000 through a GoFundMe campaign that helped Amaro move into a new home.

“Some of our Watchdog coverage has been life-changing for individuals,” he said.

For Long, that direct line between reader and newsroom is what makes the work meaningful.

“I love the Watchdog aspect of what we do because it is a place where we are directly connected to our readers,” he said. “Our job as journalists is the same as the job of a government official: It’s our job to care for the people in our community by listening to them and answering their questions.”

That sense of caring is tied closely to Long’s own evolving relationship with Lancaster County.

“When I was first hired here, I will never forget sitting in a conference room with my editor and saying, ‘If I’m still here in five years, shoot me,’ ” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t want to live here forever.”

But over time, that changed.

“I just fell in love with the work and the people here. As you get older, you start to develop a love of place and recognize the value that you didn’t see when you were young.”

Long’s roots in Lancaster County run deep. He grew up working on his grandparents’ Rapho Township farm.

“I know how to stack a hay wagon, grease a hay baler, all those things. I still go over to the family farm and help during hay season, as do my kids.”

That background shapes how he sees the county, not just as a place, but as a dynamic balance of tradition and change.

“There’s a value in service that this county breeds, alongside incredible creativity and forward thinking,” he said. “There’s always a tension between the roots of our county and the future of our county.”

It’s a tension he sees as essential and worth documenting.

“Where there’s tension, there’s learning,” Long said. “That’s our job, to chronicle how the old and the new play nicely together, or don’t. And where we go forward from there.”

He’s watched that evolution firsthand, especially in Lancaster city.

“I remember when my wife came here more than 20 years ago, there was one place in the county to get sushi,” he said. “Now there’s like a gazillion places.”

What was once a quieter downtown has transformed into a nationally recognized hub of activity and culture.

“The cultural explosion of Lancaster City has been just thrilling to watch,” he said. “It was the work of a lot of people who really did create something unique and special.”

For Long, that transformation, and the people behind it, are exactly why Watchdog journalism matters. Because at its core, his team’s job is not just to solve problems and answer questions; it’s their job to pay attention to the community.

And in a place like Lancaster County, that attention can help empower the people who live here and raise the community to even greater heights.

To support the nonprofit news reporting of Michael Long and the rest of the team at LNP | LancasterOnline, please visit Supportlocal.news to subscribe or make a tax-deductible donation.  To contact the Watchdog team, email watchdog@lnpnews.com.

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