Why Local News

What we don't know can't hurt us - or can it? A school board vote quietly reshapes your child's education. A mayoral candidate's record goes unexamined. A planning board approves industrial development beside a residential neighborhood. Such decisions rarely unfold in secret; rather, they occur in plain sight, and it is the responsibility of local news outlets to inform their communities. However, as local news outlets decline across the United States, it is evident that communities are losing more than headlines. They are losing information that allows citizens to participate meaningfully in civic life, often without realizing what is being lost or how to restore it.

A veteran journalist with nearly four decades of experience, Rick Thames has served as a reporter, city editor, and executive editor at newspapers in multiple states as well as a university-level journalism instructor. In this book, he shares his firsthand experiences seeing the ways in which ethical local journalism can influence institutions and strengthen communities. He analyzes the forces that have dissolved public trust in the press and offers pathways to rebuild this loss of trust. In addition to offering a defense of local journalism, Thames also calls readers to consider what is lost when the integrity local news disintegrates.