A child you've never met. A complete stranger approaches you and asks for help. What would you do? Come on, it's a child, small, powerless, frightened. It's a kid. Do you refuse? Do you turn away? Do you slam the door? Probably not. We're learning that the human brain seems to be hardwired for compassion for empathy

and even the stoniest adult with zero patients for nonsense typically softens when a child is in

distress that's a good thing that's how we keep the species going but But what if that child's standing before you asking for help isn't really a child at all?

Then what?

And they got a small beam of light against the mirror.

And they're going to grow.

Real, wow.

And fire. Brian Weird weird stuff.

Brian Bethel is a senior staff writer at the Abilene Reporter News.

He's been working at the paper since April 1995.

I've known a lot of print journalists over the course of my own career, and Brian strikes me as a reporter's reporter, meaning he loves the work, loves the nuts and bolts of ferreting

out the story, loves being wired into the community. And like many reporters, he's way more

interested in telling the story than in being the story. Reporters like this are an endangered

species because local newspapers are in the

fight for their very lives. Did you know that the U.S. has lost more than 25% of its local

papers since 2005? Did you know that by 2025 it's predicted that this country will have lost a third of its newspapers,

it's bad for the people who work for newspapers, bad for the communities those papers serve,

and frankly, it's just really grim for all of us.

Because while the national news outlets are fighting for clicks and likes by pandering to

whatever foaming at the mouth

divisive story is riling up readers and viewers. Local journalists are doing the far less sexy

job of holding people and institutions accountable at the grassroots level, which is where you

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