Today is Local News Day.
The idea, according to its founders, is to establish a “national day of action connecting communities with their trusted local news organizations.” And at The Martha’s Vineyard Times, we are joining more than 1,200 local news organizations as part of this inaugural Local News Day. On a personal level, as the founder of GroundTruth Media Partners, I am proud to be one of 200 partners who are both promoting and financially supporting this nonprofit initiative, which seeks to create sustainable models for local news for generations to come.
I recently met with John S. Adams, publisher of the Montana Free Press, who is the inspiration for what feels like a movement in support of this day. It is being led by a coalition of journalists, nonprofit leaders, and media innovators, including the American Journalism Project, Press Forward, and Newspack, an open-source publishing platform that supports smaller news organizations, with which we have recently partnered.
As Adams explained, “This event is about celebrating local news and helping Americans connect with the great newsrooms, from longstanding local institutions to newer digital outlets, that are serving their communities … As technology changes how people get information, we need new ways to help people stay connected to what’s happening where they live.
“The key is for every community to join in, and for every local news organization to do what it can to highlight the importance of the role local news plays in our communities,” he added.
In the runup to Local News Day, I’ve been writing a series for my newsletter, which is called GroundTruth, on Substack. It is a free newsletter dedicated to celebrating journalism that is focused on on-the-ground reporting both locally and globally, and I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along. We are mapping the crisis in local news on Substack, and I have set out to navigate big-city newsrooms that are seeing their staffs cut and their impact waning, as well as regional news organizations struggling to sustain themselves. I’ve also been checking on exciting new models for local journalism that are reimagining what it means to serve a local community.
In the past few months, I have written about big, old media organizations that have fallen on hard times, like the New York Daily News under the ownership of a venture capital firm that has crippled what was once a great newspaper, and the Washington Post, which has also been decimated by its owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, who has gutted the newsroom at the legendary paper where enshrined on the masthead there is a powerful phrase: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
As I have been looking at this issue across the country, there is no question that the landscape is bleak for local news across the country. Nearly 40 percent of all local newspapers have shut down over the past two decades — 130 in the past year alone, according to a study by Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. Roughly 50 million Americans have limited or no access to reliable local news, and there are 212 counties that have no local news sources. The crisis deepened when the Trump administration cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for public broadcasting, forcing layoffs at hundreds of stations that served as a vital news lifeline for millions of people.
The consequences are significant: As news deserts grow, communities lose the watchdog journalism that holds local governments and institutions accountable. Even as nonprofit organizations and independent outlets work to fill the gap, the pace of innovation hasn’t matched the scale of the decline. So I definitely don’t want to sugarcoat this crisis.
But on this journey to assess the landscape of local news, I also want to stress the fact that it’s not all bad news out there. There are many powerful examples of new and sustainable models for local journalism, so I am also chronicling beacons of success across the country. Just across the water, there is the impressive and relatively new nonprofit digital news organization the New Bedford Light. And out in Western Massachusetts, I did a post about the Berkshire Eagle, a legendary newspaper with a long, distinguished history that has made itself a model of sustainability. Last week, I was in the “City of Big Shoulders,” and wrote about a new digital news organization called Block Club Chicago, which is doing great work, and soon, I will be writing about the Sahan Journal, an innovative and impactful news organization that covers the immigrant communities of Minneapolis. There are many great success stories out there, and we are determined at The Times to try to be among that number.
It was legendary Massachusetts politician and Speaker of the House, Rep. Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill who coined the phrase, “All politics is local.” Well, I believe all journalism is local. The most important information we need is the information about our own community, the news of where we live, and how that news shapes our lives. The Times has always been dedicated to just that, to serving the 20,000 people who live on the Island year-round. We want to be sure these Islanders know about the work of their local school board, and the potholes that need fixing. We also inform them on big national stories like immigration reform and how it is playing out in our community, and how global issues, such as climate change, are impacting us right here along our coastline. As a local news organization, we want to share the stories about our heroes who make us proud, and we want to provide reporting on our elected leaders to be sure they are held accountable. We want to be part of the local celebrations of our culture and our shared heritage through music, dance, film, and food, and we want to let our readers know about our local industries, like fishing and local trades that sustain the Island, and restaurants and hotels that serve tourists every summer when the Island swells to 100,000 souls. We are very lucky as an Island to have news organizations dedicated to that cause — not just The Times, but also our colleagues at the Vineyard Gazette and at WCAI public radio and WMVY community radio. All of these are great examples of local news organizations that deserve our attention, our appreciation, and our support.
I believe that the crisis in local journalism in the U.S. has everything to do with the crisis in our democracy. I have written those words in this newspaper before, and I have spoken them countless times at events and conferences and media appearances for at least the past 10 years — during which the GroundTruth Project began to give shape to Report for America, a national service program for local journalism that has placed nearly 800 reporters in some 300 newsrooms across all 50 states since it was launched in 2018. I stepped down as the CEO of GroundTruth before coming to the Island to live year-round and take up the invitation from Steve Bernier to serve as publisher of The Times
As publisher, I would like to invite you to join us on Sunday, May 3, which marks World Press Freedom Day, when I will be speaking on the state of local news and why initiatives like this one matter for our community here on the Island, and for small towns and cities across America. I will be using the opportunity to speak with you, our readers, directly about my journey across America looking at local newsrooms, and to focus on what we are doing locally at The Times through our new membership model and through our nonprofit arm, Islanders Write, to find our own path to sustainability. It is not an easy task, and we welcome your feedback on how we are doing.
To do our part to honor World Press Freedom Day at this May 3 event, we will be offering a limited number of free memberships to The Times, which include delivery of the paper both online and in print, a value of $52, and a T shirt that proudly displays our founding motto: “Real News for Real Islanders. Since 1984.” We plan to give this free membership to the first 10 readers who sign up to join us on May 3 for this event, with further details to be announced. Please sign up by sending an email directly to me at publisher@mvtimes.com, with the subject heading “Local News Matters.” I will get back to you with a personal note about how you can claim your free membership, and what a membership to The Times means, as well as more specifics on the event we will be hosting to mark World Press Freedom Day on the Island.