Local News & Information
Audience growth, however, has rarely been romantic.
“We’ve gotten really good at Meta lead ads,” Heafy said. “We can acquire subscribers for under a dollar.”
Despite Facebook’s declining cultural cachet, Heafy remains blunt about its effectiveness. The company uses paid acquisition as a baseline, comparing every other growth tactic against it.
“We’ve gotten really good at Meta lead ads,” Heafy said. “We can acquire subscribers for under a dollar.”
Despite Facebook’s declining cultural cachet, Heafy remains blunt about its effectiveness. The company uses paid acquisition as a baseline, comparing every other growth tactic against it.
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
Regional differences in culture, resources, and context make it difficult to design AI systems that address locally specific concerns (Hsu et al., 2022). The hyperlocal knowledge and values that define a community are hard for nonlocals, such as Report for America-style outsider journalists, to understand (Wenzel et al., 2020). Even when trying to... See more
The press that Dewey hoped could enable public formation was instead consolidated to prevent it. The newspaper did not become an instrument of inquiry; it manufactured consent for a status quo that prioritized profit at almost any cost and condoned war for almost any reason. The fourth estate never belonged to the public, and it had always been in... See more
Directing the Herd
The metric for success isn’t a top-performing story — it’s whether the system is more connected and aware of itself than it was before, and whether unlikely collaborations or new alliances are leading to novel insights and useful interventions.
Alt business model for local news: government provides a voucher, then each person can give it to a local news org they find valuable. Helps create public funding for journalism, but avoid government intervention in the content itself
In 2026, journalism’s theory of change will be reinvented by practitioners exploring what service means beyond the article. For The Jersey Bee, that means newsletters, directories, guides, zines, text messages, resource fairs, comedy shows, and community media training — in addition to narrative reporting.
Now in our fifth year, The Bee envisions... See more
Now in our fifth year, The Bee envisions... See more