We need a local journalism partnership

A few days after the closing of this year’s Missouri Press Associations’ highly-successful convention, this headline from Editor & Publisher magazine’s website caught my attention: “The biggest risk for publishers: Standing still.”

The E&P columnist, Imtiaz Patel, makes the case that Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing  news consumption habits and publishers must quickly change their thinking, or be crushed by AI’s advance.

Fine. But how?

At the Missouri Press Foundation, I think we have at least part of the answer. We’re calling it the Missouri Local Journalism Partnership.

Here’s the working outline:

Overview: Local journalism serves as a vital component of thriving communities in Missouri. At its best, hometown journalism connects people, informs them about events important to their lives, and recognizes good works and good people next door.

Missouri cities and towns function better with local journalists around. Governments operate more efficiently. Improvement projects get more support. If a community problem arises, local journalists can find the facts and sort out how best to address the issue.

Missouri’s newspapers provide a tremendous infrastructure for sustaining local journalism and the communities they serve.

Yet local journalism is straining under a shifting media environment. Traditional sources of revenue, namely local advertising and home subscriptions, have markedly declined. Transformative technology, like online shopping and social media, have become powerful forces in our lives.

Many traditional bonds of shared community values also have frayed. Trust in local institutions has eroded. National issues intrude and often overwhelm local concerns. Divisions between urban and rural, young and old, rich and not-so-rich, college educated and others, have been magnified at the expense of neighbors finding common ground.

MPA and MPF believe it essential to engage Missourians on how, where and why local journalism and healthy civic life walk the same path.  This core challenge has led to discussion of the Missouri Local Journalism Partnership.  The project’s mission: “Help journalism thrive in partnership with local communities to improve civic life and keep Missourians well informed.’’

The Missouri Local Journalism Partnership (MLJP) will recognize that success has many parents: local and national funders, enthusiastic community advocates, and friends from all walks of journalism who have come together to advocate and fund new initiatives that support engaged,  well-functioning news organizations and communities.

For Missouri Press, failure is not an option because it would mean Missourians are left stranded in news deserts throughout the state.

Three pillars  of the Missouri

Local Journalism Partnership

With input and advice from journalists and civic advocates around the state and nation, the foundation will fundraise around new initiatives, experiments and projects that bolster one or more of the three bedrock pillars that underpin the MLJP:

1) Find Common Ground: Actively seek partners in Missouri and nationally who recognize the critical link between local journalism and thriving local communities. Just as cities and towns need to financially support utility services for water, power and refuse, so do they need to embrace new ways to financially support a local journalism utility to keep the community informed.

Examples include:

- Create templates and offer support to help Missouri community newspapers promote and organize locally based fundraising campaigns;

- Utilize MPF’s non-profit status to facilitate donations to local journalism projects.

- Seek statewide and national philanthropic support for a Missouri local journalism support fund.

2) Use technology for good: Artificial intelligence tools are on the cusp of revolutionizing communications, information-gathering, and daily life in even more startling ways. The MLJP will strive to get in front of the AI revolution to harness AI’s promise by helping local journalists do their work and improve their audiences’ lives, rather than be run over by it.

One example: Fund an AI editor faculty position or office through the Missouri School of Journalism or Reynolds Journalism Institute to vet ways AI can improve reporting on local and national issues while guaranteeing human editorial oversight to AI-assisted content.

3) Build trust: Much of the decline in local journalism and community life today can be traced to an erosion of trust. Disinformation, rumors, and harsh words often foster a belligerent ignorance that makes it difficult to do anything but retreat into a corner. The MLJP will engage in trust-building around the state to the benefit of local newspapers and their communities.

Examples include:

- Help organize trust-building roundtables throughout the state;

- Develop local reporting expertise with community members trained in journalism basics;

- Expand the Missouri rural journalism scholarship program;

- Launch high school journalism programs across the state.

The E&P columnist is right. Local news organizations can’t stand still and hope to thrive in the decades ahead. Missouri Press through the Foundation will do all we can to help chart a new path forward. There is much work to be done, but I believe the Missouri Local Journalism Partnership represents a promising place to start.