As a local journalist, you’re more deeply connected with the intricacies of your community. You get to know the people who keep it running and the people in it. It’s invigorating work, and it’s an important part of being a citizen.
The state of local news matters to our democracy. It affects how informed citizens are, and the health of communities. It’s a crucial industry that needs to be supported. Philanthropy should continue to invest, and media organizations must evolve and innovate. But these alone aren’t enough.
To help fill this gap, the government should introduce policies that support and encourage the growth of local news. These should be content-neutral and nonpartisan, and especially focus on helping locally-grounded, diverse, or nonprofit media. They should also be platform-neutral and help media to develop sustainable models, including new business models for digital platforms.
Providing a $250 refundable tax credit (as proposed in the bipartisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act) for people to use to purchase a subscription or a donation to a local news organization, would pump new money into local news ecosystems without having to pick winners and losers among different media outlets. It’s similar to the approach used by France and Canada, and it’s an excellent way to help Americans who may not itemize their taxes.
When the Oglethorpe Echo, a long-running newspaper in Georgia’s Oglethorpe County, was on the verge of closing in 2021, staffers came up with a novel idea: They hired students from nearby Grady College to be the paper’s editors. Now, they produce hyper-local news in Oglethorpe County and receive a world-class journalism education in the process.