The Rebirth of Local Journalism

Many of this country’s biggest problems are devilishly hard to solve. The decline of local news may be different.

That decline is certainly a problem. Hundreds of newspapers have closed in recent years, leaving many communities without any source of local news. Academic research has found that voter turnout tends to fall, and corruption and political polarization tend to rise, when people have no way to follow local events.

But replacing yesterday’s newspapers with 21st century digital news publications may be more feasible than it once seemed. That’s the argument that Steven Waldman — a longtime journalist who now runs Rebuild Local News, an advocacy group — made in a recent essay in The Atlantic. “Unlike other seemingly intractable problems, the demise of local news wouldn’t cost very much money to reverse,” Waldman wrote.

Most journalists don’t make a lot of money, he noted. Most communities don’t need hundreds of journalists to cover them. And local journalism often more than pays for itself in tax dollars saved. Waldman pointed to examples of costly corruption in California and Utah that exposés helped halt.