As digital news pioneers observed, ‘local doesn’t scale.’ Any solution to the local news crisis is going to involve reporters and editors who are creative and smart about what works for their readers.
New York City could be described as a news oasis – the city’s density and wealth mean there are many news outlets competing.
Gary Hershorn/via Getty Images
There are lots of ideas about how to save local news. One of them is that increasing coverage of local politics will bring back readers and viewers. Research shows that it doesn’t.
A Manchester-based local news company is turning heads and attracting a new readership.
Devon Sanders, a statehouse reporter and student at the Lousiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication, interviewed State Rep. Katrina Jackson in 2018.
Richard Watts
The local news crisis is more than a problem of shuttered newsrooms and laid-off journalists. It’s a democracy crisis. And public radio can help fix it. But it needs more money and staff to do that.
Copies of the ‘Montreal Gazette’ are shown on a newsstand in Montréal on Feb. 16, 2023. Local Montréal businessman Mitch Garber has expressed interest in buying the newspaper.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Local media ownership brings a level of accountability to the news business and offers benefits to communities by increasing voter turnout, reducing polarization and saving communities money.
An Endicott College student covers Election Day in November 2020 in a Massachusetts community as part of the college’s news-academic partnership with Gannett Media.
Sloan Friedhaber
Public relations and journalism have always existed in an uneasy balance. Social media and low revenues are shifting that balance in favour of PR, creating a lack of trust in the news.
Americans truly value local news. But 71% think that their local news outlets are doing just fine financially – which might explain why only 14% paid for a local news source in the past year.
An infusion of resources into local news outlets in Thunder Bay may help communities contend with recent reports of systemic racism against Indigenous communities.
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Thunder Bay has received national press for its historically inequitable relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Local journalism could help the city face those challenges.
Texas Tribune reporter Jay Root interviews New Mexico State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn along Highway 652 near the Texas-New Mexico border.
Marjorie Kamys Cotera for The Texas Tribune/Courtesy of NewsMatch
A recent survey found that Americans trust local media outlets far more than national ones.
The future of local news is sobering but not without some measure of hope. By illuminating both the values and challenges besetting local journalism, we can reimagine a new day for local news.
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In many cases, the mistreatment of TV anchors has become the story – at the expense of bigger questions about corporate ownership.
Sinclair Broadcast Group is under fire, following the spread of a video showing anchors at its stations reading a script criticizing ‘fake’ news stories.
Steve Ruark/AP Photo
Ottawa must decide how to spend the $50 million it’s allocated to support local journalism. The establishment of a Local News Data Lab would be a good start. Here’s how it might work.