Civic Journalism: New and Improved Local News

Sadly, hundreds of newspapers and other local news sources have closed in the past couple of decades. The good news is that many communities are seeing the emergence of new sources of local news, and many of these new sources are focusing on the positive, not following the long-held news criteria of “if it bleeds, it leads.”

A year ago, a study by Northwestern University’s journalism school showed that 360 newspapers had closed in the two years since the start of the pandemic. This was on top of the many news sources that had shut down over the past couple of decades as costs rose and news increasingly migrated to free internet sources.