Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2025.
One of the things that’s lost when the last reporter is laid off and a local newspaper stops publishing is a sort of community muscle memory.
In May 2023, I started as the editor of Brookline.News, a startup, nonprofit news site in Brookline, Massachusetts. It had been about a year since the long-time local newspaper here, the Brookline Tab, stopped publishing.
As I started covering the town, there was one major difference from my past reporting gigs at well-established local newspapers and D.C. policy outlets which was immediately apparent: people had fallen out of the habit of dealing with the press.
Local officials, like school committee members, were surprised to see me at a meeting or get my call. There was a sense of wariness that I dealt with at every step along the way. Part of that was probably because we were new and hadn’t yet established trust. But at the same time, if you’d been elected to some local position in the past year, my call was probably your first time ever dealing with a journalist. That had never been true in my past jobs.
Readers were uncertain too. Frankly, there are people in town who had gotten used to Brookline being a news desert, and took some convincing that it added anything to their lives to check one more website or newsletter every day.
I also worried (and still worry) about another kind of muscle memory. When people have gotten used to getting their news from free sources, like social media, it’s hard to convince them to start paying again. And one of our founding principles is to always be free to read for all. So our fundraising team has a difficult needle to thread: Supporting your local news outlet financially is not mandatory, and it’s not something you’ve been doing for a while, but we need it to survive.
The good news, and where my optimistic prediction comes from, is that I have seen first-hand that it’s possible to change these dynamics and start to reverse the loss of muscle memory.
After 18 months of publishing, we’re having success at reminding people how helpful and valuable it is to have and read reliable local news. Our conversations with sources sound pretty different from when we first started. And our fundraising is going well, leading with the message that just like any nonprofit, philanthropy is key to our growth and success.
To be clear, if news outlets only rely on muscle memory and continue doing things exactly as they always did, they will not survive or thrive. But many of the basic rhythms are important to re-establish. Government officials should expect to be questioned about their decisions, and residents need to be better informed about what goes on in their towns and neighborhoods.
It happens at different paces in communities with disparate situations, and the losses are felt more deeply in some places than others. But I believe strongly that communities can and will relearn the habits of local news.
Sam Mintz is founding editor of Brookline.News.
One of the things that’s lost when the last reporter is laid off and a local newspaper stops publishing is a sort of community muscle memory.
In May 2023, I started as the editor of Brookline.News, a startup, nonprofit news site in Brookline, Massachusetts. It had been about a year since the long-time local newspaper here, the Brookline Tab, stopped publishing.
As I started covering the town, there was one major difference from my past reporting gigs at well-established local newspapers and D.C. policy outlets which was immediately apparent: people had fallen out of the habit of dealing with the press.
Local officials, like school committee members, were surprised to see me at a meeting or get my call. There was a sense of wariness that I dealt with at every step along the way. Part of that was probably because we were new and hadn’t yet established trust. But at the same time, if you’d been elected to some local position in the past year, my call was probably your first time ever dealing with a journalist. That had never been true in my past jobs.
Readers were uncertain too. Frankly, there are people in town who had gotten used to Brookline being a news desert, and took some convincing that it added anything to their lives to check one more website or newsletter every day.
I also worried (and still worry) about another kind of muscle memory. When people have gotten used to getting their news from free sources, like social media, it’s hard to convince them to start paying again. And one of our founding principles is to always be free to read for all. So our fundraising team has a difficult needle to thread: Supporting your local news outlet financially is not mandatory, and it’s not something you’ve been doing for a while, but we need it to survive.
The good news, and where my optimistic prediction comes from, is that I have seen first-hand that it’s possible to change these dynamics and start to reverse the loss of muscle memory.
After 18 months of publishing, we’re having success at reminding people how helpful and valuable it is to have and read reliable local news. Our conversations with sources sound pretty different from when we first started. And our fundraising is going well, leading with the message that just like any nonprofit, philanthropy is key to our growth and success.
To be clear, if news outlets only rely on muscle memory and continue doing things exactly as they always did, they will not survive or thrive. But many of the basic rhythms are important to re-establish. Government officials should expect to be questioned about their decisions, and residents need to be better informed about what goes on in their towns and neighborhoods.
It happens at different paces in communities with disparate situations, and the losses are felt more deeply in some places than others. But I believe strongly that communities can and will relearn the habits of local news.
Sam Mintz is founding editor of Brookline.News.
