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.”