Local News & Information
Note that I’m casting the goal in terms of the number of local reporters, not the number of local news outlets, hours of coverage or number of articles. We shouldn’t care about “saving newspapers,” or any particular delivery system. New models of news distribution will continue to be invented — along with compelling new storytelling techniques —... See more
Steven Waldman • How high school sports coverage can save democracy - Poynter
Hyperlocal is the only model. Between yesterday’s Pew Research survey data and last week’s newsroom revenue analysis from Justin Bank, journalism funders and support organizations have two sets of data they can no longer ignore. Together, they expose the fallacy of national and metro-centric economics and confirm what funders have long suspected:... See more
The Hyperlocal Economics Nobody Wants to Admit
We’ve said this a hundred times before, but it’s always worth repeating: the world’s biggest news organisations aren’t reflecting the world. They are reflecting what’s dramatic, rare, and cheap enough to turn into a story. If you’re after an accurate picture of what’s getting worse, or what’s improving, you’ll need to look somewhere other than the... See more
Greater exposure to higher-quality local news leads to more political participation (Shaker, 2014), reduced polarization (Darr, Hitt and Dunaway, 2021, 2018; Moskowitz, 2021), less corporate malfeasance (Heese, Pérez-Cavazos and Peter, 2022), healthier municipal finances (Gao, Lee and Murphy, 2020), and increased political competition (Rubado and... See more
A right-of-center take on Nextdoor
We’re the providers of information and we want to be the distributors. But Google now wants to be the distributor.
Let’s remind ourselves: Journalism isn’t just writing articles.
Let’s put humans front and center — the readers we serve, engaging them more deeply, inviting them closer. We need strong bonds, community, events. We need to do what AI platforms aren’t interested in, because it doesn’t scale, it’s not safe, it’s not predictable.
Let’s put humans front and center — the readers we serve, engaging them more deeply, inviting them closer. We need strong bonds, community, events. We need to do what AI platforms aren’t interested in, because it doesn’t scale, it’s not safe, it’s not predictable.
The death of the obituary matters because local features can be an antidote to the trends of polarization and demonization. Cable news dehumanizes. Community news can rehumanize.