Local News & Information

This new form of local journalism has some common characteristics:

• Provides news and information through accessible products that address information gaps.


• Organizes and trains community members, building inclusive pipelines for involvement in journalism and media as civic engagement.


• Relies on stakeholder engagement and audience feedback loops to

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We’re the providers of information and we want to be the distributors. But Google now wants to be the distributor.

In the absence of professional journalism—in so-called news deserts across the country—critical information systems are left to the algorithmic biases of a few social media giants. Dig further, though, and you’ll find block club newsletters, school newspapers, library workshops, public access broadcasts, grassroots community teach-ins, and... See more

There is a sense of validation and pride that comes from being witnessed in a communal setting. My son’s high school wasn’t known for sports but one year it happened to have one of the top long-distance runners in New York state. There was no shortage of information about this guy. Beautiful color images of him huffing and puffing could be found on... See more

This research looks at the influence of three commonly cited features on the success of digital local news outlets: the background of the publisher, experimentation with different revenue streams, and the wealth of the surrounding community. Of the three, only the wealth of the community is statistically correlated with “success” (which we define... See more

Journalists tend to think of themselves as individual talents; driven by their own intrepid instincts, they find and uncover the stories of others. Instead, we should think of our work as one element within an interconnected ecosystem of social services.

that local journalism is a crucial facet of society that connects us to the places we live and the people who live around us and gives us a sorely needed sense of shared reality in an atomised age; that this kind of journalism has been decimated in Greater Manchester and pretty much every other community in this country because its old business... See more