We see it all across North America and the UK: small local news outlets are shutting down, or are bought out and amalgamated into much larger regional or national outlets. At first this doesn’t seem to be of much consequence. If local news outlets do not make money, perhaps the laws of the marketplace should dictate their demise. And without them, we can perhaps still share the information that is important to our communities using social media platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter, right?

Well maybe the local news situation is actually more complex than we might first think. Maybe there is some information that simply isn’t provided when local news outlets shut down. And maybe social media isn’t picking the slack in all cases, but rather exacerbating the problem. Well I, in partnership with a team of ace researchers from the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre wanted to find out the answers to these questions, so last year, we invited academics around the world to participate in a conference on the subject of local news and it’s future. Then we took the best submitted papers from that conference, along with some student journalism on the subject of Canadian local news, and we put together an interactive online publication: The Future of Local News: Research and Reflections.

As a result of this work, I learned that local news outlets are embedded in their communities in ways that go far beyond simply reporting on community events. I learned that without local news outlets, some stories will simply go unreported. I learned that social media covers national news and influencers much more thoroughly than local ones. I learned that it’s important to care about the demise of local news in our communities.

I also found areas for optimism and hope. I learned about new strategies to harness technology to understand the information needs of local communities, I learned about new models of entrepreneurial journalism that could arise to fill the gap left when conventional local news outlets are closing down. Most of all, I learned that there are many scholars, activists, and business people who care deeply about this issue and are applying their creativity and knowledge towards improving the situation.

You can read more about local news and it’s future in our interactive online publication. Many thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as the Ryerson Journalism Research Center for supporting the work.