Why We Need a New York Times in Every State

[Commentary] Ideally, there would be a New York Times for every state. Not literally, of course -- there’s no reason to start delivering a paper to people’s homes in 2014 in an increasingly wired world.

Think about it more in an institutional sense. States need outlets that are staffed up enough to both uncover new stories, and that have the credibility to determine which of the millions of news items that pop up through social media are truly stories the rest of us should care about. They need outlets that can serve not only as sources for breaking news, but also as platforms for local conversations and debates. This will not be a profit-making enterprise in most states. There simply may not be the subscriber base for an in-depth paper in every state. And creating a Bloomberg-style operation, while though it would likely be profitable, in most states would might skew to news covering major corporations and wealthy individuals. But the journalism need still exists.