Efforts ramping up to fill local newsrooms

A race has started to fill up local newsrooms as the industry continues to face rapid cuts and closures, reports Axios.

The decline of local newspapers is seen as an end to democracy in America. With shrinking opportunities in local journalism and less job security, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill up local newsrooms with quality resources.

To counter this, Report for America, a nonprofit organization stated that it plans to place 250 journalists in 164 local newsrooms in 2020.

Additionally, other groups are also contributing. For example, The Knight Foundation said in February that it’s committed $300 million into reshaping local news. McClatchy launched The Compass Experiment earlier this year, with financial backing from Google, to develop new business models for underserved news communities.

A notable contribution came from Craig Newmark, the founder of CraigsList, who has donated over $80 million to journalism causes in the past few years.

While Americans mostly agree that something should be done to address the demise of local news, the population differs on how to address the problem. To counter this, a consensus should be reached as to how to address this problem as a society.