Some states consider ways to fund local news, but critics worry it could undermine the press's watchdog role - Entrepreneur Generations

U.S. news deserts. (University of North Carolina map; click it to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.)

Rural areas are more likely to lose local coverage than their suburban and urban counterparts, either because their local paper closes or a nearby large paper shutters its rural bureaus. "More than 500 of the 1,800 newspapers that have closed or merged since 2004 were in rural communities, according to a 2018 report, 'The Expanding News Desert,' written by [Penny] Abernathy for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media," April Simpson reports for& Stateline, an initative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The loss of local coverage often makes it difficult for rural residents to find out about local news or relevant state issues. It also means less accountability for local officials and less-informed voters, Abernathy said in her report.

Some states are considering funding efforts to support local news, "but critics worry that doing so might undermine the press’s role as a government watchdog. Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, told Simpson: "There’s this adversarial relationship that exists and needs to exist."

In Massachusetts, "a bill that would establish a commission to study journalism in underserved communities and make public policy recommendations. Similar conversations are happening among advocates and legislators across the country, including in New Jersey, New York and Ohio," Simpson reports. "Potential solutions include more money for public broadcasting, providing tax incentives to persuade media outlets to close local news gaps and following the path of New Jersey, which in 2018 created a fund to bring news and information to underserved communities."

At the federal level, one proposal would amend the federal tax code to make it easier for news organizations to achieve nonprofit status, and another would allow news organizations to collectively negotiate content distribution with news aggregators like Google and Facebook, Simpson reports.

Some caution against allowing the government to have so much input in the news. New Jersey established an independent nonprofit in 2017 meant to strengthen local news coverage, but has barely funded it since then. The fact that the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium's "ruling body is top-heavy with government leaders and employees should give us pause," media writer Jack Shafer writes for Politico. "How can a nonprofit news organization directed by people in the government even pretend to be independent?"

"Nevertheless, the Colorado Media Project earlier this month pointed to New Jersey as a model in a report that proposes four strategies to close local news gaps: increasing government transparency, increasing support for libraries and higher education, empowering communities to raise taxes to pay for local news, and helping commercial media outlets convert to a nonprofit model," Simpson reports.

Though Cross said the CMP report had good ideas, it goes too far, he told Simpson: "It’s highly unlikely that the public policymakers in Colorado or any other states are going to adopt these types of recommendations because they’re too far-reaching for a lot of policymakers to swallow."

Other possible solutions for rural news deserts include expanding public broadcasting or leaning more on philanthropic funding of nonprofit news organizations, Simpson reports.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/35UFkRi Some states consider ways to fund local news, but critics worry it could undermine the press's watchdog role - Entrepreneur Generations

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