Rethinking the mission and purpose of local reporting

Steve Gray

How do you define the mission and purpose of local reporting?

Cover the news? Hold institutions accountable? Maintain a well-informed citizenry? Hold up a mirror to the community? "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?"

Search around the Web for statements of journalism's purpose and you'll find all of the above, and more like them.

And there's a lot of anxiety these days about the present and future of this mission. With local advertising and circulation revenues spiraling steadily downward, and with newsrooms shrinking along a parallel line, two things are evident. Whatever the mission of local reporting is:

1. A lot less of it is happening now.
2. Even less will be happening in the future.

In many places in this business, the central question these days is: How can we drive revenue from new sources, so we can keep supporting the functions of journalism that are critical to a free society.

To an extent, I buy that. But there's also something seriously misguided about it.

It assumes the content we produce is so sacred that it must continue to be produced, even as the number of people who want and depend on it gets smaller and smaller.

In other words, we have to keep this church open, no matter how few people come to sit in the pews.

I think the facts call for a different conclusion – one that local media companies are ignoring to their great peril.

Read the rest of Steve Gray's blog