This year’s State of Local News Report highlights local news startups in the past five years and presents a dozen outlets — urban and rural, for-profit and non-profit — that provide their communities with excellent reporting essential to democracy while progressing in the quest for stable, sustainable business models.
Local News Bright Spots 2025
A growing network for local news
If there is a playbook for building sustainable local news outlets, Ken Doctor might be writing it. The longtime journalism executive and media industry analyst ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
Securing the future of local news across S.C.
In recent years South Carolina's oldest newspaper has deepened its commitment to local journalism -- and broadened coverage across the state. Two years after a ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
On Oahu, service journalism branches out
A 2010 merger created Hawaii's largest daily newspaper, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. But the Aloha State's media landscape is being shaped and sustained by another outlet ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
From Portland cycling blog to local news site
When Jonathan Maus launched BikePortland in 2005, he was not a journalist. A marketing consultant and cycling enthusiast who’d recently moved to Portland, Maus initially ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
In Memphis, a paywall pays off
In the seven years since the Daily Memphian launched in 2018, the digital outlet has raised nearly $20 million, published more than 50,000 articles and ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
Banding together to reach more of the rural South
A few years ago, as journalists in New Orleans explored forming Verite News, a light bulb went on for some of the people they were ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
In Virginia, life after print
Tom Lappas knew in fifth grade that he wanted to be a journalist. For three years after college, he worked at a local paper in ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
Green shoots of growth in Red Bank
RedBankGreen may have started small, but it's aiming big -- into the next century. The hyperlocal site covering a northeastern New Jersey town of about ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
What only Houston can do
Making a newspaper that dates to 1901 a digital-first news source is a process. "It's not magic," says Kelly Scott, executive editor of the Houston ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
Making AI tools accessible for local newsrooms
When Rust Communications began considering a new CMS for its flagship newspaper, the Southeast Missourian, in 2021, the family-led media group sought input from one ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
How COVID built a statewide news site
When John S. Adams was laid off from his job covering the Montana legislature in 2015, he didn't immediately know he wanted to start a ...
Local News Bright Spots 2025
Partnering up in suburban Chicago
Serving communities around suburban Chicago remains the mission, even if methods of delivering information have evolved since the predecessor newspaper to today's Daily Herald was ...