Greening the News Deserts

Freedom—the very embodiment of the American experiment—is gravely threatened. Democracy is the beating heart of freedom and is in functional decline in our country. News is the circulatory system, the arteries and veins. Over a span of just the last two decades, the U.S. has lost upwards of 3,000 local news outlets and well over 40,000 journalists. Half of the nation’s counties now qualify as news deserts.

These counties—home to roughly 70 million people—are among America’s least affluent and many are rural. They are starved for information, but the entire country is malnourished. A Northwestern University study on the state of local news concludes: “With fewer journalists covering city halls and state government, the average citizen knows less and less about what their local government officials are doing.”

Enterprising nonprofit ventures have been stepping into the breach at the national, state and local levels. Some are thriving, some struggle to survive. They are helping to fill the…