More than a third of the nation's local newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, with the Western U.S. being especially hard-hit, including significant losses in Utah and New Mexico.
City Hall reporters Eli Wolfe and Natalie Orenstein tracked every Oakland City Council vote in 2025 - all 138 of them at full council meetings, plus 519 more at committee meetings - to find out how your representative is doing the most basic part of the job.
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This new job reimagines the once common public editor position, otherwise known as the newsroom ombudsman. Instead of examining the work of a single newsroom, Compton will answer audience questions about all the newsrooms in Indianapolis. Through her columns, she'll explore the strengths and weaknesses of the local news organizations, looking at their community service and their journalistic values. Her goal is to strengthen overall news literacy of the people living in Indianapolis.
I am new to the East Bay Times branch of Bay Area news. God bless it. You cover local news. You inform us of state news. You pull strong, relevant pieces from the Los Angeles Times and other papers. You still have comics. The op-ed by Mark Barabak should be read by all. I taught at California community colleges for 40 years and used good journalism as writing models, points of discussion and assignments.
The reopening of Oakland's historic Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts has prompted demands from the IATSE Local 107 stagehands union that the venue honor its agreement to hire union workers, as has been the practice since it opened in 1915. The arts center, consisting of a series of smaller spaces that add up to create Oakland's second largest venue after the Coliseum, underwent a $100 million renovation and is expected to bring in $5 million per year in ticket sales.
I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
Caltrain had a 56% increase in ridership in 2025, landing it the title of fastest growing transit agency in the US by American Public Transportation Association's (APTA's) Transit Wrapped 2025 list. Additionally, the agency is rolling out its new electric-powered, one-day-only Holiday Train Saturday tickets sold out in a whopping 45 minutes, but spectators can still watch it roll along its route from SF to Santa Clara with a few notable destinations.
A decision to close the newspaper has been taken, and the appropriate procedures are now experiencing a steady decline in readership and advertising in recent years. As the consumption of news has increasingly shifted to online media, print newspapers have struggled to compete with digital platforms and social media outlets. The challenging circumstances created by this radically altered and irreversible commercial environment have seen The Northern Standard struggle to sustain its long-term viability.
After walking away from a career as a lawyer in the late 2000s, Shapiro committed himself to helping rebuild local news in the communities where he lived. He launched his first three TAPinto sites in New Jersey in October of 2008, simply hoping to help give back to these neighborhoods where he was raising his family. Fast forward 17 years, and he's built up his organization as a franchise, with 99 TAPinto sites across New Jersey, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania.
I spend a lot of time in Haitian and immigrant communities across the United States. In Brooklyn, Miami, Chicago, and the Midwest, I keep seeing the same thing: the people keeping their communities informed aren't reporters. They're the pastor who delivers immigration updates before the sermon. The barber who streams local politics on Facebook Live. The neighbor who translates every school notice and distributes it through five different group chats. The teacher who explains American bureaucracy to families who arrived last week.
"From 2022 through 2024, 357 LION Publishers members participated in a program that aimed to help local news outlets at any stage of growth "move the needle on sustainability." The process included assessments, coaching, recommendations, and funding. LION has since transitioned it to a self-service assessment, but between hundreds of audits, thousands of hours of coaching, hundreds of funding requests, nearly 100 follow-up reports, and feedback from program participants over the first three years, LION had a rich set of data to mine for a sense of what interventions and metrics matter most to newsroom sustainability."
The most obvious use case for generative AI in editorial operations is to write copy. When ChatGPT lit the fuse on the current AI boom, it was its ability to crank out hundreds of comprehensible words almost instantly, on virtually any topic, that captured our imaginations. Hundreds of "ChatGPT wrote this article" think pieces resulted, and college essays haven't been the same since. Neither has the media.
As the political backlash grows, these gaps become even more important to try to fill with some creative supports. That could be partnering with local LGBTQ+ community centers, community colleges and universities, or even mainstream media willing to do coverage of their local LGBTQ+ communities.
On Wednesday, October 1, the first day National Public Radio (NPR) no longer has any federal funding, Austin's NPR station announced a new venture. Austin Signal, a daily weekday "magazine" in the form of a news show by KUT News, will launch Monday, October 6. A press release says the show "blends trusted local reporting with Austin's vibrant culture to keep Central Texans connected and informed." Each episode will be 30 minutes long, and will air weekdays at 1 pm on KUT 90.5.
Last year SUNY launched the Institute for Local News, engaging a dozen student reporting programs at colleges across the state-including Stony Brook University, the University at Buffalo and the University at Albany-to produce local news content. Faculty direct and edit content produced by student journalists for local media partners. This summer, the Institute sent its first cohort of journalism interns out into the field, offering 20 undergraduates paid roles in established newsrooms.
Carpenter Media's acquisition of Pamplin Media Group and EO Media Group has led to severe reductions in staffing and print publications, significantly impacting local news coverage in Oregon.
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