“It’s just horrific to watch the community where you were born and raised be completely burned down,” said NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff, a Pacific Palisades native who has been watching wildfires since Jan. 7 Since then, he has spent almost every waking moment. Covering this tragedy from the front lines, his hometown.

"It's just endless pain," he said. "It's a weird cognitive dissonance from here that I'm both caught up in as a reporter and emotionally devastated like everyone else. But I'm also proud to be from Palisades and to be in To kind of be one of the voices that represents this community and understands what it is.”

At a time when the television industry is in a state of decline, when tech moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg consider "traditional media" to be "obsolete," crises like the Los Angeles fires once again prove the value of television, and Not only were there national news broadcasts like Soboroff's, but there were also local news stations that were reporting from the center of the crisis around the clock for days on end.

In fact, local news in particular has proven to be a critical part of the infrastructure, providing the latest evacuation orders, live video of fast-moving fires and tough questioning of officials at press conferences. While social media has been a toxic cesspool, forcing users to figure out for themselves what is real and what is fiction (or perhaps an AI-enhanced hoax), local journalists on the ground have been grilling leaders directly, even amid the fires Still burning looking for answers when it happens.

"They are performing a public service in the most literal sense," Soboroff said.

KCAL reporter and anchor Jasmine Viel was one of the local reporters covering the fires all week. She said many viewers have contacted her personally, eager for information about their homes or neighborhoods.

“I can’t tell you how many people have messaged me or emailed me or even tried to find me on social media,” she said, “just to ask me if I could tell them if their home still exists ? Can I send them a photo of the street?"

"It's both rewarding and exhausting," KTLA anchor John Fenoglio agreed. "You feel like you can demonstrate the power of broadcast journalism even as tragedy unfolds around you. It's what we do for a living. Breaking news is what we do best, and that’s why local news is important and useful.”

But, of course, it's not just local newscasters who have a personal connection to this crisis; Like Soboroff and his NBC colleague Katy Tur (who also grew up in Palisade), many of the national reporters covering the fires are from the area, or Having family members living here makes their reporting more intimate than when they are dispatched to a disaster scene. Other more distant parts of the world.

"If I grew up in Minnesota and had to come here to fight fires, I wouldn't know what I'm doing or where to go," said Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin, who grew up in Orange County. Melugin said. . "But if you grow up in Southern California, you grow up around fire. When I was 3 years old, the Laguna Canyon Fire happened in '93 and almost burned down our house."

ABC News' chief national correspondent Matt Gutman found himself in the smoldering ruins of his aunt's Palisades home, collecting what he and his team had recovered from the fire-melted safe All documents and items found. "The jewelry I found was so hot I had to stuff it in my pocket," he said. "But I wanted to get it out before anyone saw the safe open, or before there was more damage to my great-grandmother's heirloom."

Jonathan Vigliotti, a national correspondent for CBS News, didn't grow up in Los Angeles, but like many national news staffers, he now lives here. "I live in the Hollywood Hills, far enough away from the (Palisades) fire, but my husband has been communicating, asking me what I saw and if he should evacuate. I remember telling him at the time - it was Tuesday - 'You're fine . "I was wrong because my home had to be evacuated the next day. So, I was fighting fires in the Palisades because my husband, my friends, all my neighbors had to evacuate."

"We have team members who lost their homes in the fire," said Tim Wieland, president and general manager of KCAL and KCBS. "Currently we have 15 employees under evacuation orders. We have other employees whose homes were damaged by the fire and they Not knowing when we would be able to go back and see if the house was still habitable," Wieland said, adding that employees had to leave the newsroom to help friends and family evacuate or deal with personal crises, only to return the same day as they did. Realize how important the work you do is.

"Typically when we cover a story on television, we focus on the little things, so we find the worst-case scenario and focus on that," Gutman said of the disasters he and his colleagues have been covering said the seriousness of it. "But in this story, in the aftermath of the Palisades fire and the Altadena fire, the opposite is true. Cameras can't quite capture what the naked eye can see."

Sometimes, a personal connection to the area can create the kind of gripping drama often seen in prime time. For example, when Soboroff traveled through the Palisades to cover the fires, he was surprised to find his childhood synagogue still standing, which he leaned into during his coverage.

"I know how important it is, not only for our audience but for people like me who grew up here, to know that this is not going away and that over time, it will come back," he said. "There's something about it all that's ingrained in your bones, and as an Angeleno, it's always in the back of your mind. You know you coexist with nature in a way that a lot of urban places don't. But see It works - that's another story."

This story appears in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.