Our Last, Best Chance to Reinvent Local News

[Commentary] Over the last 25 years, daily newspapers have shed as many as 25,000 newsroom jobs. The United States has just under half the number of local newspaper journalists working today as it did in 1990. Jobs in local broadcast radio and television have suffered in similar ways as many owners have responded to a changing market by downsizing newsrooms and requiring the remaining reporters to cover more beats. There’s hope we can fix this before the next national election.

Right now we have a tremendous opportunity to ensure that both existing local newsrooms and startups have the money they need to do the reporting that supports civic life. In June the Federal Communications Commission began a long-awaited auction that will involve a major redistribution of the public airwaves. The FCC is urging broadcasters, including dozens of public television stations, to abandon their channels or move elsewhere on the dial to free up bandwidth for data-hungry users of mobile services like AT&T and Verizon. This is potentially the most important development for local news and information since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which helped establish NPR, PBS and their many local affiliates and programs.

[Timothy Karr is the senior director of strategy for Free Press]