Local news focuses on events and issues that affect a specific community or geographic area, providing a more relatable, intimate experience for citizens than national news. It holds local institutions accountable, highlights community issues and concerns, and promotes civic engagement.
The local news landscape is changing rapidly. Traditional local media is facing significant challenges — declining advertising revenue, competition from digital platforms and decreased staff resources. These trends impact the depth and breadth of local coverage.
Nonprofit newsrooms are playing a key role in building a more financially sustainable local news ecosystem through collaborative reporting, community engagement and revenue-generating strategies. Across the country, these innovative news organizations are using different approaches to make their work more relevant and engaging to their communities.
Some of the examples below include community-driven journalism (using a variety of different storytelling methods), solutions reporting and a restorative narrative approach, as well as partnering with multiple community institutions. They also employ a range of strategies to grow and diversify their audience, including crowdfunding campaigns, events, subscriptions, memberships, and other revenue-generating initiatives.
Local news can have a significant impact on citizens’ lives, informing them about the actions of their government and the services they depend on, and shaping their sense of place. In a recent Poynter Institute survey, 76% of Americans reported having a great deal or a fair amount of trust in their local newspaper. In the small college town of Eudora, Kansas, where a local newspaper shut down in 2019, a group of University of Kansas journalism students began a student-run publication that is filling a gap in community coverage and serving as an example of how local journalism can make a difference.