Funding Local News
The discussion
Jonas: Our town's newspaper closed last year, and now nobody covers council meetings at all. I think local journalism should be funded from taxes, the same way we fund libraries.
Mei: I'm wary of that. A newsroom that depends on the council for its budget will think twice before investigating the council, however many safeguards you write into the rules.
Beatriz: I used to intern at a regional paper, and honestly the money wasn't the only problem. Readers under forty simply weren't buying it, and the paper never worked out how to reach them online.
Jonas: But the audience problem and the funding problem are linked. Without money, there's no one to experiment with new formats.
Mei: If public money is involved, I'd rather it went through an independent foundation that gives grants to many outlets, including online start-ups, rather than directly to one newspaper. That reduces the dependence on any single politician.
Beatriz: That's closer to what I'd support, and I'd tie the grants to measurable local coverage, like the number of council meetings reported. Otherwise the money could just fund more celebrity content.
Jonas: I hadn't thought about the independence issue in that way, and the foundation model sounds safer. As long as the money actually arrives, I don't mind the route it takes.