Wondering what the impact of losing local news really is? Ask the residents of Bell, California, an incorporated city of Los Angeles County. Their last local newspaper was sold in 1998 and shut down several years later, leaving residents to rely on L.A. newspapers and TV stations that had scant coverage of their community. The timing could not have been worse.

In 2005, California passed a law capping the salaries of city council members in general cities, prompting Bell’s city council to hold a special election to convert Bell into a charter city. With no local coverage, Bell's voters had little knowledge of the measure or its implications. The measure passed 336–54 with only 1% of the community casting a ballot. 

For five years, the city council raised their own salaries and corruption ran rampant. By the time the Los Angeles Times broke the story in 2010, the average salary for each city council member was $100,000 a year for part-time work and the city manager was making an annual salary of almost $800,000. In a city with a population of 37,000, the police chief made over $450,000. All of this was financed by a series of illegal activities that shouldered taxpayers with a heavy burden. 

With 200 counties across the U.S., home to 3.2 million residents, now lacking any local coverage, and another 1,500+ with only one paper, usually a weekly, how many Bells might we be missing?

Local News in Crisis

The business model for journalism began to falter when sites like Craigslist and Monster emerged, diverting classified ad revenue from papers, which had profited mightily from a near monopoly on this kind of advertising. But it didn’t become a true crisis until Google and Facebook rose to market dominance with advanced algorithmic targeting, capturing the majority of local ad revenue.  

Falling circulation has also dramatically reduced revenue for papers from subscriptions. And while many papers have a digital product (or are digital only) with growing readership, they have struggled to get readers to pay for online content at the levels they did for print subscriptions. With falling circulation and ad revenue, over 2,100 newspapers have shuttered in the U.S. in the last 15 years.

But it’s not just the loss of news outlets that’s a problem. Those that remain have seen mergers, large staff layoffs and reduced coverage. The merger of Gannett and GateHouse, the nation’s two largest newspaper chains, in late 2019 means that now 1 in 6 daily newspapers in the U.S. are owned by one company. “Massive consolidation in the newspaper industry has shifted editorial and business decisions to a few large corporations without strong ties to the communities where their papers are located,” notes a University of North Carolina report about the news landscape. 

Other traditional media, including broadcast news and radio, have also been hit with dropping ad revenue and in the case of TV news, lower viewership. This has led to consolidation that results in more national news at the expense of local coverage across these outlets. But the crisis has hit newspapers most heavily. This is a problem because newspapers produce 60% of local news stories — more than television, radio and digital-native websites combined. 

Falling Public Trust

News deserts, coverage declines, and editorial decisions made far from communities have had an impact on public trust in the media. Today 6 in 10 U.S. adults have “not very much” trust or “none at all” in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” Local news enjoys higher levels of trust as compared to national news, but many have no idea just how much local coverage is struggling: 71% of adults believe their local news media is doing well financially!

Taken together, the environment is rich for misinformation to proliferate. A decline in quality journalism relevant to local communities leaves a chasm that allows misleading or false stories to spread, particularly when social media algorithms populate feeds with inflammatory content. This further erodes trust in real journalism, disrupts civic dialogue, and contributes to polarization.

“A vibrant, responsive democracy requires enlightened citizens, and without forceful local reporting they are kept in the dark.”

Pen America, Losing the News Report

Why Save Local News?

You might be tempted to chalk up the loss of local journalism to just another market that was ripe for disruption. Local news was slow to adapt to changing consumer behavior and failed to foresee market changes on the horizon. But we cannot just lose local journalism. It’s not the same as losing your local video store: quality, verified news and information is critical to a healthy democracy and our ability to engage productively in civic life. 

In response to the local news crisis, the industry is innovating. Philanthropy is well positioned to support experimentation that is taking place across the country.  

Invest Directly in Local Newsrooms

The nonprofit news sector is a bright spot of growth and innovation. There are now more than 350 nonprofit news outlets, the majority of which developed in the past decade. These are helping to fill information gaps left when for profit newspapers failed; 70% focus on local, state, or regional coverage. Many are addressing lack of trust head on and optimizing for trust in how they are designing their organizations, doing their reporting, and engaging their communities, but this is resource intensive work. This is a young and growing sector of journalism and philanthropy, offering an opportunity to build the field. 

There are many quality, local examples including Oaklandside, Berkeleyside, El Timpano, Open Vallejo, San Jose Spotlight, and past grantee CalMatters, among others. Most are digital only, but distribute through partners that help them reach a broad audience. Many are in a start up phase and developing a path toward sustainability. Philanthropy can support the continued development of their business models.

A note: When considering direct investments in a newsroom, Battery Powered will narrow its focus to nonprofits based in and serving the Bay Area. 

Support the News Ecosystem

There are a number of “backbone” institutions that are supporting innovation and building the infrastructure needed to rebuild local news. Organizations like the Institute for Nonprofit News are reaching hundreds of news outlets with best practices, research, distribution channels, shared fundraising, and other services that are speeding the growth of these pioneering nonprofit newsrooms.

Philanthropy can also support legal assistance to journalists and newsrooms. Few local newsrooms can afford sufficient legal support or insurance against libel and defamation suits, which has a chilling effect on surfacing important stories. University-based legal clinics and nonprofit groups like the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press provide pro bono legal services and representation to newsrooms and journalists across the country.

While traditionally journalists competed vigorously to get a scoop or break a story, collaboration is becoming increasingly important in the new media ecosystem. Collaborative reporting initiatives such as the Bay Area Media Collaborative or CalMatters’ California Divide project bring together many newsrooms to provide more in depth coverage of key issues across a community or region. 

Engage Communities

Connecting communities and newsrooms more closely is critical to rebuilding public trust. Sometimes called “engaged journalism,” those who do it well are reporting WITH and TO a community, rather than ON a community to an elite audience. There are a number of exciting experiments such as City Bureau’s Documenters program, which trains and pays community members to attend under-reported public meetings and publish the results, or El Timpano’s SMS-based reporting platform that facilitates conversation with and provides timely information to Oakland’s Latino community. Philanthropy can support innovations in how journalists and newsrooms connect more closely with the communities they are reaching, building trust and gaining readership in the process.