The owner of my daycare had a friend in the nursing home next door. When she told me after kindergarten one day that Viola died, I went home to check the Journal Review.
Her name wasn’t in it.
Viola may have been dead for years, but I had already come to see the newspaper as the keeper of the community flame. Though it would be nurtured by an alphabet soup of television and radio outlets, a lifelong love affair with the news was sparked in the orange box by the road.
Those of us in the ride-or-die crowd feel an urgent sense of civic duty on this Local News Day, a national campaign led by the Montana Free Press to reconnect Americans to community journalism.
The nation’s local news landscape is rapidly shrinking. Saving local newspapers and, for that matter, television stations, from private-equity firms, consolidated media companies, and AI content scraping cannot otherwise succeed unless Hoosiers rediscover the importance of consuming professionally produced news.
Local newsrooms must first do a better job of sounding the alarm. Despite thousands of U.S. newspapers and reporting jobs vanishing over the past 20 years, thanks to the collapse of the advertising model, most Americans don’t realize their local news outlets are hurting for money.
In a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 63% of adults said they thought their outlets were doing very or somewhat well financially. When Pew asked the same question before the COVID-19 pandemic, the share was higher, but it still explains why more people aren’t motivated to pay for news.
I suspect most of the Journal Review’s devoted readers feel the economic headwinds. Back when my byline appeared on these pages, for instance, college sports fans demanded the NCAA basketball tournament bracket after the sports editors prioritized local coverage over national content in their limited space.
Giving tax credits to small businesses that advertise in local news outlets and requiring AI companies to compensate small and medium-sized outlets for scraping content would boost revenues. Lawmakers in Wisconsin are considering the tax credits. More ads equals more pages and money to hire reporters.
In the meantime, student journalists could fill some of the empty desks. I envision partnerships between newsrooms, colleges and universities to deploy students to close coverage gaps or even create new beats, like the young professionals recruited by the organization Report for America.
Such up-and-coming talent is walking distance from the Journal Review offices. The staff of The Bachelor at Wabash College produces one of the better student newspapers for an institution without a dedicated journalism program and has a raft of awards to prove it.
To fund the additional reporting, news outlets could partner with philanthropy, as the world-class Post & Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, does to bolster investigative projects and other coverage through a fund administered by a local community foundation. Donations are tax-deductible.
A tax break isn’t enough for most people to pick back up a newspaper habit. The stories have to be a little timelier.
State and local governments should incentivize newspaper companies to maintain or reopen printing plants in the cities they primarily serve. Companies may save money up front by shipping pages to other cities or even states to be printed, but at the cost of earlier deadlines and stale news.
To help build trust, outlets could work from pop-up newsrooms, inviting the public to observe the newsgathering process and offer feedback. A pop-up hosted by The Dallas Morning News earlier this month drew about 200 people. The Tampa Bay Times even started a monthly “book club” for articles.
A news diet rich in high-quality journalism does not come cheap. With so much of the best reporting behind online paywalls, a “knowledge gap” has formed between wealthier consumers who can afford the access and the less affluent who are shut out.
Public libraries help close the gap with physical and digital collections of current newspapers and magazines. Subscription gift cards, similar to those for streaming TV services, are another possible solution. Replicating the health savings account model for news subscriptions may be even more sustainable.
When I moved apartments last fall, one of my first priorities after signing the lease was changing the address for my Journal Review subscription.
Every morning before the sun, I step outside to grab the newspaper (thanks, April!) and try to finish The New York Times crossword before it’s time for work.
I know it’s Thursday, but go easy on us, Will Shortz!
Nick Hedrick of Crawfordsville and a former Journal Review reporter ontributed this guest column.
