Yesterday, I took part in one of my least favorite pastimes: driving to Boston on a weekday morning.
But the company on the drive, as well as the reason for it, made it well worth it. Along with Sarah Robertson, a writer for The Shoestring and the Montague Reporter, and Erik Hoffman, an editor at the international environmental publication Mongabay, we headed to the state Legislature to raise the profile of independent local news publishers in Massachusetts in advance of Local News Day, which happens to be today.
A cause has got to be pretty important not only to get me to drive to Boston, but to enthusiastically promote a made-up day. This isn’t National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, though (no shade to those who observed on April 2). It’s Local News Day, a day celebrating something that ought to be a guaranteed right alongside food, water, shelter, and healthcare.
Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. The right wing in this country has maligned the media in broad strokes. But perhaps worse, the rich and powerful have largely bought up our free press and stripped it for parts over the last quarter century, leaving once informative legacy newspapers thinner and thinner each year. Since 2013, newsroom employment in Massachusetts has decreased by 60%, which functionally means that public meetings, local elections, and community organizing are getting far less coverage than they deserve in the Bay State.
Thankfully, The Shoestring is in a position to be a small but potent counterexample. Our stories were read 188,000 times last year, with about half of weekly readers reporting that our coverage inspired them into civic engagement like voting or attending a meeting. Thousands of people in Northampton read our election coverage in the 48 hours before polls closed during the September preliminary. And by making our reporting free to republish, we are pushing back on a culture of competition between local media and making sure our most important stories get in front of more local readers. Both our audience and our institutional funders have responded by supporting our work, and we’ve defied industry trends by growing — albeit slowly — each year.
But the truth is, we still get to the end of each year unsure of whether the next year will be our last. The same is true of the dozens of similar publications that have sprung up around the state to plug the holes in our communities’ information needs.
At The Shoestring, we feel it’s time for state intervention, which brings me to the Statehouse. I’ve previously advocated for public grant-making for indie media in Massachusetts — a process by which the state would provide funding to an independent nonprofit, which would in turn direct that funding to organizations serving the information needs of their communities around the state. It’s a model that, for the last few years, has channeled millions of dollars towards local media in New Jersey. But there are lots of ways that legislation can create a more hospitable environment for local media, and first and foremost, we need to communicate the problem and get legislators interested in being part of the solution.
Making my way through the labyrinthine marble halls of the Statehouse alongside publishers and supporters of local news from around the state, I was pleased to find that the legislators and staff who I visited were well aware of the problem.
“Local media is the connective tissue of a healthy democracy,” said Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, a Northampton Democrat. “It tells the stories no one else will, holds power accountable where it matters most, and keeps communities informed and engaged. Without strong local journalism, entire regions risk becoming invisible.”
Now, for the pitch. For this, I turn to Candace Clement, a supporter of The Shoestring and a member of the media advocacy nonprofit Free Press Action, who joined us on the trip.
“Public problems require public solutions,” she said. “Dozens of states have taken up efforts to pass laws to support journalism, but none are more powerful and transformative than the creation of independent, grant-making bodies like the NJ Civic Information Consortium. Massachusetts can do this.”
Time will tell whether our message will gain momentum in the Legislature. In the meantime, take a moment on this Local News Day to share a piece of local media you’re glad exists, make a donation to your favorite local news publisher, and imagine the news landscape you’d like to see here in the Connecticut River Valley. Together, I really do believe we can turn the tide on the decline of local news.