Local news is daily devotion of the Daily Herald

Local. Every day. Everywhere.

It's not yet a Daily Herald slogan, but it could be.

Managing Editor Madeleine Doubek informally coined the phrase this week as a group of editors was evaluating the Daily Herald against a competitor that has been getting some attention because it includes a weekly supplement focusing on community-level local news in some regions of our coverage area.

You may quibble a bit with the phrase. The Daily Herald isn't available everywhere, and we don't have our own reporters staked out across the globe. But when it comes to local, community-level news, the words define us as they do no other source in the region.

We've suffered through the recession like all newspapers, but with our own staff of reporters and photographers and a network of freelancers working out of four offices, the Daily Herald still has by far the largest news gathering operation in the Chicago suburbs - a contingent of locally devoted professionals who concentrate every effort possible on seeking out and publishing as much local sports, entertainment, community and government news as we can find and fit.

In the past week alone, the Daily Herald has published hundreds of stories that are of little interest to the broad Chicago audience but are critically important to the people living within the 5- or 10-square-mile area where they occurred. For instance:

• Ongoing stories about controversies dividing the Buffalo Grove village board.

• Daily stories and pictures from the Lake County Fair.

• A big new water project in Mount Prospect.

• The profile of a Batavia trainer who is helping hundreds of Tri-Cities-area high school athletes.

• Budget battles, including regular spats between the county board and county officers, in Kane County.

• A profile of the woman directing Naperville community television's coverage of the local Little League championship games.

• In-depth stories and reactions to the 15-year prison sentences given to a trio of burglars who terrorized a Barrington Hills family.

• Charges against a Sugar Grove woman accused of counterfeiting.

• Daily stories, pictures and Web photo galleries from the Tour of Elk Grove Village bicycle races.

• A neighborhood controversy over the potential location of a funeral home in Arlington Heights.

• Announcement of a reading program at the Huntley Area Public Library.

• A look at a "theater walking tour" that takes participants to various plays and locations throughout Elgin.

• A new store devoted to running and exercise in Glen Ellyn.

I could, of course, go on. And on. And on.

And I wouldn't even be getting to compelling local reports that are of interest throughout the suburbs - like the story of the St. Charles father who drowned trying to save his children, the upcoming Brown's Chicken trial or even the story of snakes being moved from a house in rural Lake County.

Oh, you may see an online Web site here or a print upstart there that professes to give you news of your neighborhood or your community. But there's just one source for that news everywhere in this region every day.

And you're reading it now.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald.