For the past week, a globally well-known person has been on the Gold Coast for a reason unrelated to their popular life as one of the world’s foremost YouTubers and technology reviewers. Instead, they were here to represent the USA in the World Ultimate Championships, with their mixed team eventually walking away with gold medals in the finals.

But you’d never know Marques Brownlee was competing on the Gold Coast unless you followed MKBHD, because the closest the Ultimate Championships got to any kind of media coverage was in Newcastle, where a local Ultimate player had been chosen to compete. A global championship of a future Olympic sport – allegedly under consideration for Brisbane 2032 and LA 2028 – and the only way you’d know about it is if you happened to walk past the Runaway Bay sports fields.

The simple fact of the matter is that “the media” is not compelled or required to report on or tell the story of every little thing that happens in our community, even if it’s supported and sponsored by local and state governments or the national carrier.

I’m reminded of when a law that I had a hand in creating passed. I expected there to be a news article about it that I could share with colleagues.

But either no reporter was in parliament at the time, or if they were, they deemed this change to how Australia operated not fit for print.

There’s something interesting about the news that you might not have noticed yet: every night, the news bulletin is the same length. The newspaper is a similar number of pages each day. And more so with printed newspapers, where there need to be ads sold by the sales team before there are pages waiting for stories.

People often complain that their organic reach on social media is lower than it used to be. Despite the conspiracies surrounding Instagram and reach, the main contributor to the drop in numbers is the increase in creators and content, while the number of hours in our day has stayed the same.

There’s a lot of quality life happening outside of newspapers, magazines, blogs, algorithms, interest graphs, TV, or radio.

There are many great restaurants not on any list, and so many good cafes that don’t appear on Google when you search “best café near me.” Billions of valuable, valid, and important stories never get shared by the news.

A lot of life happens in the margins, and that’s where I’m trying to cast my eyes—towards the unseen and the unheard. Not only because there’s good there, but because the systems we live in, the societal scaffolding we’ve built, won’t go there.

I have friends in Gold Coast media whom I could have called to tell about MKBHD and the championships, but that story wouldn’t have reached the top of the editorial pile. Not enough interest, not enough clicks, not enough views to report on a story like that. He’s just a tech reviewer. It’s just frisbee.

The media isn’t evil or bad, but the laws of physics and capitalism means it can’t tell every story. That’s our job – yours and mine.