The year 2025 will long be remembered as a devastating milestone for the decline of local journalism.
It caps two decades which have seen the news industry ravaged and the idea of truth itself under attack in ways that would have seemed unimaginable just a generation ago. Over the last twenty years, almost 40 percent of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news, according to the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, which has been closely tracking the problem for many years.
Newspapers across America are disappearing at a staggering rate with more than 130 papers shutting down in the past year alone. That means about 2.5 newspapers close every week. It is no surprise that newspaper employment is sliding steadily downward. News deserts – areas with extremely limited access to local news – continue to grow at an alarming rate in every corner of the country. While there are definitely a few ‘green shoots’ of innovation particularly in local, independent digital startups, these newsrooms remain heavily centralized in urban areas, and they have not been appearing fast enough to take root in a way that will make up for the erosion elsewhere.
Public media, which has long been an important source for news across America and particularly in rural areas, saw all of its federal funding cut by the Trump administration, triggering rounds of lay offs and the scaling back of important public service journalism in public radio and public television stations across the country. Congress eliminated $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting, leaving some 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations to find a way forward. The good news is that local communities have stepped up to fill the gap in many places, a strong vote of confidence for the faith that these communities have in their local stations. But it remains an uncertain time for most of them, and the impact of these recent cuts to public media are yet to be measured.
In this grim landscape there are a few rays of light that are working hard every day and continuing, against the odds, to produce important and impactful work. They are a mix of innovative startups, stalwarts of public media and traditional local newspapers, supported by an ecosystem of non-profit organizations like Report for America. As a co-founder of Report for America, I just want to boast about the amazing team that is working tirelessly to address this crisis. Over the seven years since it launched, the team has helped produce more than 100,000 local news stories across the country. Last year, it placed 181 reporters in 152 host newsrooms.
While it is an almost impossible task to list with confidence a “top 10” of news stories or news organizations, I do want to share some spots where we see amazing work that is serving local communities and having an impact. (I do this with an apology in advance to all I have overlooked, and I am sure there are many.) My short list focuses on that idea of ‘ground truth,’ meaning those newsrooms where the reporters have been out in their communities on the ground and doing shoe-leather reporting and digging to find the stories that matter.
The first one is Verite News. It’s a non-profit with a mission to carry out in-depth investigative reporting on inequity and injustice for the people of New Orleans, headed up by the legendary Terry Baquet. I had a chance to meet with Baquet and reporter Richard A.Webster on an evening in New Orleans where they discussed their investigation into the case of death row inmate Jimmie Duncan.
Webster’s dogged reporting exposed that evidence in the case was flawed and fabricated by a forensic team that used junk science. Webster’s work, in partnership with the investigative news organization ProPublica, resulted in the overturning of the case. Here is the stark lead to Verite’s most recent story on the case last month: “Jimmie “Chris” Duncan walked out of the Ouachita Parish Correctional Center and into the arms of his parents last week after spending the last 27 years on death row.”
Back when they were one of the first Report for America newsrooms, 100 Days in Appalachia was putting the spotlight on some of the most pressing issues in the region, often with a long-term perspective that is absent from other media. They haven’t lost their touch, as evidenced by this story where reporter Laura Harbert Allen explores the arrival of a new extractive industry to the region: data centers, and how the local government is opening the doors for them, without thinking of the environmental consequences or consulting the community.
Many news organizations have dedicated their resources to capture the immense human toll of the policies of the current administration. Borderless Magazine, for example, reported how immigrants in Illinois slipped deeper into hunger amid SNAP cuts and eligibility changes, alongside growing fears of a national crackdown on both documented and undocumented immigration. Approximately 250,000 refugees and other humanitarian visa holders find themselves relying on food banks, which are trying to increase their capacity to meet the growing need.
Newsrooms like Borderless are part of a cohort of pioneering and innovative organizations that are staffed by immigrants covering their own communities. As Gary Pierre-Pierre points out in a prediction for Nieman, this is one of the most exciting corners of the local news ecosystem these days. Pierre-Pierre highlights how people in the community, from barbers to pastors, are delivering news in a way that is effective, but might not win them any awards. And how journalists should look at them for inspiration.
“For years, local newsrooms have debated how to “engage audiences.” Meanwhile, immigrant communities have treated information as a survival system. I’ve watched families gather after long shifts to collectively decipher government letters. I’ve seen multilingual WhatsApp threads get crucial facts out hours before official channels. I’ve watched regular people become translators, navigators, and explainers — not out of civic theory, but because someone needed help and they could offer it. In 2026, more news organizations will understand that people don’t always want an article. Sometimes they just want clarity.”
Back in New England, one of the brightest talents that came out of Report for America, Michaela Towfighi, wrote for the Concord Monitor this powerful account of how the New Hampshire foster system places kids in facilities sometimes thousands of miles away, putting them at risk for abuse and neglect. Towfighi expertly weaves the story of a young woman who suffered through seven placements in two years, including a stint in an adult prison, even though she was a minor at the eyes of the state, with the cost of these programs and the social and health issues they raise.
And I need to mention my own local newsroom, the MVTimes where I serve as a publisher, a role I do alongside my work with GroundTruth. As publisher, I have the great honor of seeing a talented team of young reporters and editors shining every day on a small Island with big and complex challenges around climate change, affordable housing and immigration. I am hugely appreciative of all they do and grateful for the recognition they receive in our small island community, along with the recognition by their peers, as they were recognized as New England’s weekly “Newspaper of the Year,” by the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Join the GroundTruth community.
In these dark days, we have to do our best to seek out the light, and these and many other organizations are the beacons we should follow.
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This article originally appeared on Charlessennott.substack.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org
