Local News & Information

While Americans in polls report historically low levels of trust in the media, it could be in large part because much of the press hasn’t been speaking to the concerns of their everyday lives. It would mean incorporating the knowledge and skills of reporters like Heather Bryant, who grew up in rural Missouri, where her lower-income family would buy... See more

What I have learned in my years studying the role of journalism in civic discussion is that democracies are best served when media coverage focuses on issues that affect society and people’s everyday lives and minimizes “horse race” reporting that obsesses over who is ahead in opinion surveys or fundraising.

The relationship between journalism and the people it aims to serve is broken. But we can heal it if we learn to put audiences and communities at the centre of everything we do. The News Alchemists newsletter wants to help you to do just that.

1/This study suggests that global use of social media over time leads to global sorting into just two primary camps, or worldviews. If their hypothesis is correct, it has profound implications for the world in the coming years. h/t @jonathanstray https://t.co/sPbQufHfSG https://t.co/DgFukvxvh5

Six years later, Jeff Jarvis wrote a frustrated post on his blog Buzz Machine. Hurricane Sandy had just devastated his New Jersey neighborhood. He needed to know which streets were passable, where power crews were actually working, which gas stations had fuel. His local news outlet published stories about the devastation but left the community on... See more