THIS WEEK, Steve Waldman, the cofounder and president of Report for America, published a two-part report for CJR about the local-news crisis. In it, Waldman considers the decline in newsroom newspaper staff against a few other data points—there are currently far fewer reporters per 100,000 people, and per $100 million in state and local government spending, than two decades ago—before providing a road map for growing the ranks of local reporters by 50,000. Critically, Waldman leaves room for where, and how, such an influx would support the news ecosystem we currently have. “There is much to discuss,” he writes, “on where those 50,000 news reporters should work, who should employ them, how those entities can be sustainable, and what kinds of journalism they should do.”
Origen: Local needs and the local-news crisis – Columbia Journalism Review
