But today, many of those journalists are gone. Those who remain fear losing their jobs not only to corporate downsizing and shrinking advertising revenue but also to technological change. Artificial intelligence can summarize meeting notes, but it cannot walk neighborhoods, ask the uncomfortable follow-up question or grasp the lived realities of a community. Today, local journalism is shrinking and media ownership is concentrating, leaving communities with fewer watchdogs, less transparency and weaker connections to the issues that shape their daily lives.
There’s little that local government officials can do about market forces or emerging technology. But some are finding ways to provide new and expanded venues for community voices to be heard and local issues to be debated. It’s vital that these efforts continue, because the erosion of local journalism has been staggering.
Between 2005 and 2023, the U.S. lost nearly 2,900 newspapers. More than half of the nation’s counties have become “news deserts,” with little to no reliable coverage of city councils, school boards or local courts. Meanwhile, massive corporations such as Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group now control about 40 percent of local TV stations. When these conglomerates take over, coverage narrows. Locally produced news coverage is replaced with syndicated national content, and the daily ins and outs of local government — politics, zoning decisions, erupting ethics issues, questions of police accountability — disappear from public view.
Now you can add to that the gutting of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ending federal support for PBS, NPR and their member stations. These cuts will hit small, rural, tribal and minority-oriented stations hardest, weakening local programming and even jeopardizing emergency communications.
These losses matter. Local journalism is not just a mirror reflecting community life; it is also an accountability tool. I remember spending months helping a reporter understand how weak ethics rules in government end up costing taxpayers. That story educated the public and helped me advance legislation requiring policymakers to recuse themselves to avoid conflicts.
Local journalists, connected to the communities they cover, notice details and nuances an outsider might miss. They develop trust with residents and sources over time. When editorial decisions are made in boardrooms hundreds of miles away, not in the neighborhoods where citizens live and work, the result is less relevant information that residents aren’t interested in.
Yet not all the news about the news is bleak. Some local governments are experimenting with creative alternatives to fill some of the void left by shrinking commercial media. Austin, Texas, for example, streams its government channel across multiple platforms, offers video on demand and allows residents to participate in public meetings virtually as well as in person. Seattle’s “Town Square” series transforms public forums and debates into broadcast content. Boston uses its city channel to feature neighborhood sports and community events, bringing visibility to programs like midnight basketball and local recreation leagues that otherwise go uncovered.
In my home of Atlanta, efforts are also underway to strengthen community media. I chaired the mayor’s blue-ribbon committee that helped re-establish the city’s public access station after it went dark for two years. More recently, Atlanta launched a digital newsroom, ATL.Direct, that highlights everything from the city’s leadership in electric vehicles to opportunities for youth recreation to recruitment for the fire department. Initiatives like these won’t replace the investigative capacity of traditional newspapers and locally owned broadcast newsrooms, but they demonstrate that there are ways for local governments to step in and support local news and relevant storytelling. The rise of nonprofit digital newsrooms is a development that local officials should welcome and encourage.
Still, the broader trend remains deeply troubling. As independent outlets close and conglomerates consolidate, the diversity of voices shrinks, critical stories go untold and misinformation fills the vacuum. Citizens lose trusted sources of information, officials operate with less scrutiny and democracy becomes weaker. Democracy depends on more than elections — it depends on citizens who know what their government is doing, who can weigh competing perspectives and can hold leaders accountable.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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