The indispensable Rebuild Local News coalition features a new report on the problem. A recent post by its founder, the writer and entrepreneur Steven Waldman, found that the local-news crisis was “more severe and widespread” than previously known. You can read his full report here. Above is the innovative map his coalition and Muck Rack have produced to quantify and illustrate the problem, county by county.
 
The collection of our previous local journalism reporting for Our Towns is here.

The list below is important in two ways. The first is that each and every one of these links takes you to its own detailed list of experiments, success stories, lessons learned (including setbacks), and practical examples to apply. 

The second is that its breadth should convey courage-in-numbers. People trying to solve this problem in their own communities are not alone. Here we go:

Again, Rebuild Local News is worth following closely, for its hands-on efforts to develop legislation state-by-state to improve prospects for the news. As context, its leader, Steven Waldman, was a co-founder for the invaluable Report for America, which we have reported on before and which recently announced a milestone of its corps members producing 100,000 stories for their mainly local publications.

In addition, a heartening number of NGOs, alliances, foundations, civic groups, and other organizations are pitching in to revive local news. To name just a few that are worth following, with links to each: Press Forward. The Knight Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation. The American Journalism Project. The Institute for Non Profit News. LION, or the Local Independent Online News Publishers. The Lenfest Institute. The Solutions Journalism Network. The National Trust for Local News. The Medill School at Northwestern, with its Local News Initiative. The Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky, is another indispensable daily news source on this front, with its Rural Blog. From The Guardian, a report on scientists reviving a climate site that Team Trump had closed down. Although it covers much more than journalism, we follow David Byrne’s Reasons to be Cheerful. Similarly with The Progress Network, and The Daily Yonder, and many more. 

We’ll continue to add to and update this list. And we welcome suggestions and additions.

The Texas Tribune is perhaps best known. The Baltimore Banner is three years old and has made an enormous mark. (It has won Pultizer and Polk awards.) The Mississippi Free Press, based in Jackson, is five years old and is similarly influential and celebrated. Mississippi Today is nine years old and has won a Pulitzer for its work. The Land, in Cleveland, trains citizen journalists. The Mainstreet Daily News, in Gainesville, Florida, has won significant subscriber support. In Vermont, both VT Digger and Seven Days are well-known statewide news sources. The Kingsbury Journal in DeSmet SD was reborn out of the demise of two smaller local publications. Universities across the country are doing more and more to report on their communities. Just one prominent example is from Muncie, Indiana, where the Ball State Daily News is a leading source of local coverage.

The only problem with starting a list like this is that there could be 100 more entries, with new ones being launched almost every week. Again it’s a race: how fast the old order is collapsing, versus how fast the order is being built. We’ll do our best to keep up with new entries to the list—and new models of funding sources, reader engagement, uses of technology and AI, and other innovations in pursuit of sustainable truth-telling—in this space.

In August, a familiar local-news-collapse story emerged. A company called News Media Corporation, which had billed itself as “the voice of small town America,” suddenly announced that it would immediately shut down more than 30, across five inland states. (Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois, and Arizona.)
Within two weeks, many of these papers were rescued. A small-newspaper company called Champion Media, based in North Carolina and run by members of the Champion family, bought the four orphaned papers in South Dakota. Three newspaper executives in Wyoming bought the eight shuttered papers there and re-hired the staff. “We are honored to assume stewardship of these legacy community newspapers,” Robb Hicks, one of the purchasers, said in an announcement (as quoted in WyoFile). “Our foremost priority has been to ensure that these counties are not left without a credible, enduring source of local journalism.” Amen.

It’s a race, and a battle. Admiration to all who stand up.