The crisis for local news with “news deserts” appearing across the national landscape as well as the hope for a new kind of local journalism were highlighted at the 35th Annual Bioneers Conference in Berkeley in late March with the panel “The Struggle to Save and Revivify Local Media.”
California Local News Fellowship Director Christa Scharfenberg led a panel with Larry Ryckman, editor and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, previously Senior Editor at The Denver Post; Jacob Simas (‘09), Community Journalism Director at Cityside Journalism Initiative in San Francisco Bay Area; and Madeleine Bair (‘11), founder of El Tímpano in Oakland.
Scharfenberg launched the panel by laying out the realities of the media environment today. Citing Northwestern Medill’s State of Local News 2023 report, she said that local newspapers are shutting down at an average rate of two per week and that so-called “news deserts” can be found in 204 counties nationwide with hundreds more at risk.
“My friend Evan Smith, founder of the Texas Tribune, sums it up this way: ‘There are now two Americas. The informed and the uninformed,’” Scharfenberg said, explaining that 70 million people, about a fifth of our population — mostly people of color and living below the median household income — live without a local news source.
She said that this can mean less accountability, more corruption, higher public spending, lower social cohesion, fewer people registering and turning out to vote and more polarization.
Scharfenberg also gave reasons for hope amid the fragility of that ecosystem. She said philanthropic institutions across the country are responding with a half-billion dollar initiative for local news, called Press Forward. She also said state and national policymakers are proposing innovative solutions, such as the California Local News Fellowship program. Editors and reporters — like those on the panel — are reinventing journalism to be more community minded and robust.
Bair, a graduate of Berkeley Journalism, and founder of El Tímpano, which serves the Latinx community in the Bay Area, said her news organization is providing news to a previously unserved community and rethinking exactly how that community is served.
“Who does media serve and who is left out? How does media sometimes perpetuate harm to certain communities?”, asked Bair.
She explained that El Tímpano is seeking to do local journalism with greater community engagement. Even before hiring a reporting staff, she said, the publication hired a community outreach coordinator to enable the relationship to begin with trust.
Ryckman, whose staff at The Colorado Sun has grown from 10 to 28 since 2018, said trust is also at the core of his newsroom.
“We show our work, we cite our services, we’re specialists in the topic area. It’s so important for us to build community and build trust,” Ryckman said. “It’s not really something we were talking about, at least not in the newsrooms I was a part of 40 years ago.”
Simas, of Cityside Journalism Initiative, says the organization has 30 people working in Oakland and Berkeley newsrooms and reaches more than 500,000 people monthly. A Richmond non-profit newsroom is set to open soon.
R: Christa Scharfenberg, Jacob Simas, Madeleine Bair and Larry Ryckman
“There’s a common theme across all of our publications and that is being ultra-transparent with our audience,” said Simas, who explained that in The Oaklandside there’s a section called “How We Work” that enables editors and reporters to speak directly to readers.
For example, he said, they explain why they cover “systems instead of symptoms” when reporting on policing or housing.
All of the news organizations talked about bringing community members together to express opinions and engage with each other and their publications. Bair said El Tímpano has hosted events with a “community microphone” to share views on rising housing costs in East Oakland.
The journalists also discussed innovative business models.
Ryckman said The Colorado Sun faced a crisis when print costs more than doubled and access became limited.
“We along with our friends at the National Trust for Local News and the Colorado Media Project said, ‘What if we bought a printing press? What would that look like? And could we turn it into an asset for the community?’” he said. “We ran the numbers and it’s counterintuitive. ‘Hey I know a great business model, let’s get into print.’
“Turns out it’s not that hard to find a printing press these days,” said Ryckman, to laughter. “Who knew the future is print.”
The panelists emphasized how they are making links with other community-based organizations, especially where there are connections to health and the environment or extreme conditions caused by the climate crisis. On the flipside:
Simas ended the event with Joshua Darr with the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, who looked at the decline of local news and the rise of political polarization. “If it’s easier to locate information about the indictments of former President Trump than to find out what’s happening in your local school board meetings or state legislative hearings, that should have effects on how we think about politics generally.”
If there’s one great takeaway from the Bioneer Panel beyond these many insights of the panelists it’s that many people are innovating and fighting to save local news and, in fact, make it better than ever.