{"id":215199,"date":"2021-07-21T18:57:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T22:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/?p=215199"},"modified":"2021-08-30T15:24:48","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T19:24:48","slug":"newspapers-are-dying-long-live-local-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/newspapers-are-dying-long-live-local-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Newspapers are dying; long live local news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

About a quarter of the newsroom at the Chicago Tribune<\/a> has left the building, accepting buyout offers from new owners Alden Global Capital, also known as the \u201cworst owners in journalism<\/a>\u201d according to a former editor in their chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local news is dying<\/a>, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, not so fast; are folks really concerned about losing a once-daily wrap-up of select things that happened yesterday to a few days before, surrounded by 2D cartoons, used car ads, and lukewarm opinions about local politics, slathered on thin newsprint with fewer pages every year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are<\/em> worried about losing accountability journalism, about keeping watch during public meetings where elected officials are making decisions \u2014 too often in secret \u2014 about where tax dollars are going. They\u2019re wondering who will write about all the local businesses they patronize, about the restaurant openings and closings, about the successes (and, as a Philadelphia fan, the inevitable failures) of the local sports franchises \u2014 or about their kids\u2019 schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why, then, should we not fear the reaper that\u2019s coming for newspapers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research shows new newsrooms are launching fast<\/a>, 50 a year for the last five years. They\u2019re for-profit, non-profit, public-benefit corporations, and LLCs; they\u2019re a husband-and-wife team covering a small town; they\u2019re a staff of dozens holding politicians to account at the statewide level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they are not is a replacement for the newspapers that are dying by the dozen, and that is OK. Look closer at Chicago<\/a>, past the woes of the formerly mighty Tribune, and you\u2019ll see an ecosystem taking root there and more broadly across Illinois: Block Club Chicago<\/a>, City Bureau<\/a>, ProPublica Midwest<\/a>, the Better Government Association<\/a>, The Triibe<\/a>, Chalkbeat Chicago<\/a>, Borderless Magazine<\/a>, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting<\/a>, Grown In<\/a>, the Illinois Eagle<\/a>, the Chicago Reader<\/a>, Extra Points<\/a>, and McKinley Park News<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re not replacing the newspaper. They don\u2019t need to. This nascent industry has the potential to grow beyond the limitations of newspapers, to truly reflect and serve communities large and small, rural, urban, Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer\u2026 and on and on. We just have to stop thinking about saving the unsaveable and build businesses that serve the needs of communities first. In fact, what these publications are starting to offer is just as good, if not better, than the legacies they\u2019re increasingly supplanting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Block Club Chicago, for instance, has:<\/p>\n\n\n\n