New Solutions to Rebuild Local Journalism
Knight Media Forum
Local journalism is an area that peaks my interest greatly, alongside breaking news and long-form journalism. I love how intimate local reporting is as it focuses on community issues. As one of the panelists said, “Local journalism taps into audiences … if you are going on a food tour of Queens, would you want [suggestions] from someone in the area or someone from a national food magazine?” Clearly the first choice.
Local journalism is a struggling. Over 65 million Americans live in counties with only one local newspaper — or none at all, according to Research Analyst at The Brooking’s Institute Clara Hendrickson’s analysis of data from UNC’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media’s Database of Newspapers and the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program.
The panelists — Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, Steve Waldman and Mitra Kalita — discussed how to rebuild local journalism, especially in terms of sustainability and equity, in today’s Knight Media Forum.
It is very important to get news organizations back into the community, all of the panelists reiterated. But in order to rebuild, there needs to be resources which is the downfall of local journalism. All of the institutional pieces are there, but the money and humans are missing that are needed to build local news back up. The panelists added that weekly community-based media outlets still have the trust of their communities but are fragile at the moment and the priority should be to strengthen these local media outlets.
Fifty percent of daily newspapers are owned by hedge funds, according to Waldman. He said that hedge funds did not cause our problems, but they make it very difficult for us to get out of the ditch we are currently in. In order to rebuild local journalism, the panelists all called for the federal government to step in. The federal government spends billions of dollars in advertising and a small portion of that goes toward local news. The panelists argued that half of those funds should go toward local journalism in order to rebuild it. However, this reallocation of funds has been proposed before and it always gets rejected.
The rebuilding of local journalism is going to rely on the community and community media organizations mobilizing to demand that government spend their money on advertising for local journalism. The panelists said it is about getting the money to smaller players.
