Local news organizations are so deeply intertwined with the well-being of their communities that we often don’t know how essential they are until they’re gone.
Recent research indicates that as newsrooms close and news deserts expand, civic engagement plummets, communities become more polarized for want of shared information, elected officials serve their constituents less faithfully and pollution levels rise in the absence of watchdog reporting to keep dirty factories in check.
The function that local newsrooms provide is in itself an essential public service, the information they offer so vital to the health of communities and our democracy. We cannot afford to wait until more news organizations close to prioritize that fact, but the good news is that a shift has already begun.
In 2019 we will continue to bring together newsrooms, facilitators and funders to forge a framework for revitalizing local news with public service at the center, in which news organizations are more attuned to what their communities need and more adept at providing it.
Examples of promising efforts to identify local information needs and serve them include: Outlier Media filling information gaps via SMS in Detroit; City Bureau training community members to document public meetings in Chicago and Detroit; Lenfest Local Lab building news products for the community in Philadelphia; Community Information Cooperative helping to nurture information districts across the country, starting in New Jersey; Listening Post Collective and Hearken working with local newsrooms to bring the public into the editorial process; and Your Voice Ohio convening community members and journalists around pressing issues.
New and emerging funding models can help support journalism as service, ranging from the American Journalism Project to Civil to ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network to Berkeleyside’s pioneering direct public offering to our own work at Report for America, which uses a salary sharing model to create more local reporting positions to dig into undercovered issues and better serve marginalized communities.
These approaches share a commitment to quality journalism rather than clickbait, bringing philanthropic and public support behind the idea, as AJP states in its mission, that “access to civic information is a public service in and of itself.”
Will Wright, a Report for America corps member at the Lexington Herald-Leader, helped draw statewide and national attention to a water crisis in Eastern Kentucky that compelled Gov. Matt Bevin to commit nearly $5 million to help fix infrastructure problems there.
“I’ve always believed that journalism is a public service,” said Wright, who hails from Western Pennsylvania and went to college at University of Kentucky. “Reporting on local and state government, writing features about everyday people doing great things, and keeping a watchful eye over powerful industries all help our world move forward.”
That kind of work can only happen when news organizations take the time to listen to what people in communities want and need, and to build the trust required for the relationship to be two-way rather than extractive.
Manny Ramos, a corps member at the Chicago Sun-Times and native of Chicago’s West Side, put it best.
“The community doesn’t owe us anything,” Ramos said. “It’s about us going in there and attempting to develop that trust.”
Kevin Douglas Grant is the co-founder and executive editor of The GroundTruth Project and vice president of Report for America.
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Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
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Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
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Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
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Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
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Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
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Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
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Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn