An experiment (N=177) examined how user-generated comments on a crime news article, which attribute the reported crime to the local residents' predispositions, affect individuals' processing of the news and their reality perception. Participants who viewed the regionalism-invoking comments estimated the crime rates of the featured region to be higher than those exposed to regionalism-irrelevant or regionalism-counterbalancing comments, and such effects were more pronounced for those with a stronger regional self-identity. Moreover, those who read regionalism-related comments, either regionalism-invoking or regionalism-counterbalancing, (a) recalled better the locations featured in the focal and the subsequent, yet unrelated, news articles and (b) attributed greater responsibility to news media coverage for the persistence of regionalism, as compared to those who viewed regionalism-irrelevant comments.