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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Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
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Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
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Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
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Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
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Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
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Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
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Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
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Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
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Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
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Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
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Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
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Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
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Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
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Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
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Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
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Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
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Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
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Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
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Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
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Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
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Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
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Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
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Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
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Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote