New report spotlights real-world strategies for rebuilding local news

Local news is in a transitional phase. Newspapers’ loss of revenue and audience to the internet combined with too many rapacious chain newspaper owners have left many millions of Americans with too little or no local news coverage.

But there is cause for optimism, says Leonard Downie Jr., the author of a new report that examines how new nonprofit local news media, philanthropists and universities are among those working to revive and strengthen local news coverage with a variety of creative approaches.

"Confronting the Future of Local News" is the first report issued from the Knight Center for the Future of News, which was launched at Arizona State University in July. After this review of the current state of local news, the Knight Center will begin its future-focused work, including a report soon on the use of artificial intelligence. Downie, the former executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008, is also the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU.

The report highlights a variety of strategies that organizations are using to thrive. Examples range from an unpaid group of retired journalists launching three newspapers in coastal Massachusetts to billionaire Glen Taylor — owner of a graphic communications empire — revitalizing The Minneapolis Star Tribune by expanding coverage and boosting digital readership.

Downie’s research also spotlights Block Club Chicago, a diverse team of 30 journalists covering many of the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. And there are a number of “documenter” programs that have made the community a part of its own local newsgathering. For example, news site Signal Cleveland uses “documenters,” hundreds of ordinary local people who are trained and paid to attend official meetings, take notes and write summaries. If a potential story is identified, it is further researched and written by Signal Cleveland journalists.

Together, these examples show that in many cities and markets, local news is actively being reinvented. 

Downie recently spoke to ASU News about his findings on local news media, what is being done to try to fill in the gaps, and how he considers this “an important moment” in American journalism.

Question: What was the impetus for the report?

Answer: Local news has been a primary interest of mine going all the way back to when I started at The Washington Post in 1964 as a summer intern on the local news staff. I did my first investigative reporting on the local staff. I also was one of the editors on our Watergate investigation, which started as a local burglary. I then ran the metro news staff for five years.

Even though I went on to other things such as being a foreign correspondent, national editor, managing editor and then executive editor of The Post, local news was still of great importance to me. After I'd been on the Cronkite faculty for a while, I was able to see what was going on with local news around the country. Local news is so vital to Americans, and yet it was reaching a turning point. It was disappearing in many parts of the country.

So I began doing research on my own for several years, and I created a sizable archive. When we decided to start the Knight Center, I told Dean (Battinto) Batts that I’d be interested in taking advantage of my research and writing a report about the local news crisis. He thought that was a good idea, and I spent about a year working on it.

Q:  What were the key questions you wanted to answer in the report?

A: The purpose of the Knight Center is to produce very practical research, experimentation and application of ways in which to strengthen news in the United States at a time when it’s changing so rapidly. It’s mostly digital now and changing in terms of who's providing news. So how can you decide what is accurate news and what is not accurate news?

Many new news organizations are so dependent right now on philanthropy, among other things. So how can they learn to become sustainable? Many of them were started by journalists who left other news organizations, or their news organizations left them, and they decided to start these local and national nonprofits around the country.

Q: Are they doing a good job filling in the gaps?

A: These are still early days, and there’s still more that needs to be done. Most of the leaders of the nonprofits did not have business experience, but rather they had journalistic experience. So it took a while, but there are funders and others who are helping them build business plans to sustain them. There's still a lot more that needs to be done to figure out how to improve this situation.

Some for-profit news organizations have been bought by billionaires who are expanding them. Minneapolis, Boston and New Orleans are good examples of news organizations that have a brighter future than they had before. And there are all these nonprofit news organizations that have started around the country, only going back a decade or two. On the funding side, there are philanthropists who have decided to spend money on saving news in the United States.

Funders like the Knight Foundation and MacArthur Foundation — and many others — have contributed large sums of money. They, in turn, fund what are called journalism support organizations, or JSOs. They are working directly with nonprofit news organizations to help them get started and sustain them as they build their business models.

Q: Was there one specific newsroom’s approach that surprised you with its success or originality?

A: There were many, but the Civic News Company stands out. Its Chalkbeat, Votebeat and Healthbeat websites and newsletters cover local education, voting issues and health, respectively, in a number of cities and states across the country, in addition to its national website’s coverage of those subjects.

Q: What are the pros and cons of philanthropists and nonprofits in the news industry, and how long can this type of giving go on?

A: The pros are that the money is desperately needed, and it's a surprisingly large amount. In fact, one of the most encouraging things is that there are a lot of community foundations around the country joining in. Many local communities have foundations started by wealthy families that have mostly been contributing to other kinds of local philanthropy. Many are now interested in contributing to news organizations in those communities because they want local news to survive. Lots of foundations and philanthropists around the country are contributing to this cause. That's the good news.

How long can that continue? How long before their money runs out? How long before their interest wanes and they go onto something else? That is why the new news organizations must create business plans that also consider advertising, reader memberships and other ways of raising money, because we don't know how long big philanthropy will last.

Q: Your report also states that ownership is the key to success and how local news is covered. How so?

A: We've seen that many news organizations, particularly newspapers, that have died around the country or have very small news staffs now compared to what they used to have, were bought up by the wrong people. Alden Global Capital, for example, and other chain owners of that kind. Their interest was not in providing local news. Their interest is taking as much money as they can out of these newspapers before they die. This type of chain ownership is a big problem. Whereas a few newspapers have been bought by rich people who are rebuilding their news staffs and expanding their local coverage.

Q: Universities are also being tapped to help local news coverage. How are they assisting in this endeavor?

A: This grew organically, initially out of universities like the Cronkite School at Arizona State University and the University of Maryland, which long ago established student-staffed local and state news bureaus. For example, the Cronkite News bureau in Washington, D.C., is the only Washington bureau for the entire state of Arizona. It is called the “teaching hospital” model, in which students learn by doing real journalism for websites, newspapers and television stations.

This enhances their ability to get jobs and to do good journalism when they leave school. In the meantime, it provides a lot of local and state news coverage that otherwise would not exist. There's even an organization now that encourages more universities to do it. A few universities have even bought up or are working with small local newspapers where they're located, where students work along with professionals.

Q: As your report states, AI is creeping into the media. How exactly is it being used, and do you find that effective?

A: AI should not be used for news reporting. It's not reliable enough. But it is useful for the business side of news organizations to find new subscribers and new funders. It’s also being used by news media to help with things like headline writing or certain kinds of research, but it still requires a professional journalist to then decide what's right and what's not right to use. AI will develop, so we'll see what happens in the future.

Q: “Confronting the Future of Local News” has an optimistic feel as it looks to the future of journalism. Do you believe this to be the case?

A: I hope it doesn't sound too optimistic because there's still so much work to do to ensure that local news survives and thrives. As I stated in the beginning of the report, we're at a turning point. A lot of things have happened that have hurt local news coverage throughout the country and deprived many parts of the country of any local news. But at the same time, there are all these new startups and news organizations that are being rescued. So, on balance, I can see where local news can survive, but it’s going to require a lot of work.

One of the people that I quote in the report is Sarabeth Berman of the American Journalism Project, which is one of the most important of the journalism support organizations in the country. She said it took a generation to ruin local news, and it’s going to take another generation to save it.

I believe that’s exactly where we are, which is why I think this is a very important and timely report, and why it’s important for it to be part of the Knight Center for the Future of News. It can be used as a starting point for the kind of research and development that needs to take place for the future of local news.

Read the full report online.