The rebirth of local news

The narrative around the news business has felt static for years. We’re caught in the grips of an ongoing “mediapocalypse,” characterized by buyouts, layoffs, and shuttered newsrooms.

No one can deny that the environment is challenging. But the emphasis of the story too often obscures a trend that should be the source of real optimism: the rebirth of local news. My prediction, or at the very least my hope, is that in 2025 the new generation of thriving local news outlets will get the attention it deserves.

According to the Medill State of Local News Report, even amid the growing “news deserts,” we saw a net gain of over 80 standalone digital news outlets in 2024. All across the country, entrepreneurial and civic-minded outlets are reenergizing the local news business.

From my vantage point at the American Journalism Project, I see local nonprofit news organizations that are changing the way we sustain local news, benefiting from a widening recognition that local news as a public good. They are building reliable income streams that combine philanthropy, sponsorship, and reader revenue. And they are making innovative use of digital tools to reach new audiences, rebuilding the bonds between communities and newsrooms.

These methods are working. In an industry often characterized as being in a permanent state of contraction, many nonprofit local news outlets are expanding. To highlight a few examples from among the American Journalism Project’s partners, Signal Ohio, founded in 2021, launched Signal Cleveland that same year, expanded with Signal Akron in 2023, and this year unveiled its statewide bureau while announcing plans for Signal Cincinnati. The Texas Tribune, one of the standard-bearers for nonprofit news, this fall announced the creation of a network of community newsrooms, beginning in Waco. Cityside, a California nonprofit media organization, has in recent years debuted sites covering Oakland and, this year, Richmond. In the last year, AJP’s portfolio of grantees generated $86 million in revenue, up 36% from 2022, and they saw 58% median revenue growth. This growth is enabling more journalism, as our grantees increased editorial and newsroom staff by 18% over the last two years.

The list of accomplishments goes on, as do the accolades these new organizations are earning for their work. For the past two years, the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting has been awarded to a new nonprofit local newsroom. Mississippi Today, founded 2016, won in 2023 for their coverage of a $77 million dollar welfare scandal. This year, City Bureau and Invisible Institute in Chicago won for their coverage of police mishandling of missing person cases.

What the success of all these outlets underlines is that the public’s appetite for local news never went away, even as broader economic forces curtailed the supply. The American Journalism Project conducts surveys of residents across local media markets, asking them about their experiences with the news. Data from thousands of respondents confirms that, overwhelmingly, people value local news and appreciate the role it plays in fostering a deeper sense of community. This is in addition to the other benefits to local news that we’ve grown accustomed to hearing about in a negative framing: how the erosion of local reporting leads to increased political polarization, decreased voter registration, and so forth. The good news is we now have a foundation to reverse these impacts.

None of this is to minimize the ongoing struggles in the larger media landscape, and in the news industry in particular. Yet these struggles are precisely why a model for sustainable, high-quality local news ought to be getting greater attention. There is a badly needed opportunity here for our business to attract and retain talent, to galvanize new supporters, and to scale proven practices.

There’s an old adage in the news business that journalists only cover the planes that crash. But in this case, we need to cover the planes that are taking off. A new generation of thriving local news outlets, doing journalism at the highest level: This is a story that needs to be told.