Dwindling number of local reporters hurts not just journalism but democracy, Report for America founders write - Entrepreneur Generations

Journalism is suffering from a dwindling supply of local reporters, and it's hurting not only the news media, but Americans and democracy, Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott write in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. The two co-founded Report for America, a nonprofit project announced last September aimed at putting 1,000 new reporters at local papers in the next five years.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of newspaper employees in the U.S. dropped from 456,300 in 1990 to 183,000 in 2016. Some newspapers have shuttered, and others have reduced their coverage areas or forced fewer journalists to try to cover the same area. Some newspapers have attempted to compensate for the thinning coverage with snazzier websites and better tech. But according to Waldman and Sennott, "the key solution is not technology. It’s having more reporters — a lot of them — on the scene," Waldman and Sennott write.

Fewer reporters means citizens don't have the information they need to make decisions for their families and hold institutions accountable. They have less information about local candidates, and less reporting is correlated with a lower voter turnout. News outlets don't have the horsepower to challenge elected officials, and increasingly print stories based on press releases — giving politicians more power to spin the narrative.

Fewer local reporters makes people less likely to trust journalists. "Residents would be less likely to view 'the media' as arrogant, ideologically driven miscreants if they see real reporters at school board meetings until midnight, covering nitty-gritty stories of importance to them," Waldman and Sennott write.

Instead, residents sometimes turn to national news outlets, which can be biased and lack the nuance and background of local reporting. "In 2014, almost 1 out of 5 U.S. reporters worked in New York, Washington or Los Angeles, compared with 1 in 8 in 2004," Waldman and Sennott write. "Isn’t it likely that this contributed to the media missing the two biggest stories of the past few years – the rise of the opioid epidemic in middle America and the political strength of Donald Trump?"

Newspapers are unlikely to get more reporters with the current, largely profit-based model, but a nonprofit model that focuses on public service could help. If that's to succeed, nonprofits (and donors) will need to play a bigger role in journalism. "Whether it’s Report for America or some other model, a sea change is required: Local donors — and the community as a whole — need to view journalism as essential as local libraries, museums and hospitals," Waldman and Sennott write. "It’s not complicated. We need more reporters — not for the sake of journalism but for the health of America’s democracy."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2GVT955 Dwindling number of local reporters hurts not just journalism but democracy, Report for America founders write - Entrepreneur Generations

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