I think the gut reaction is that local news is failing because people would rather hear from a source that is more biased to their personal viewpoints. Local news is by nature unbiased (mostly).
This is true, but there are a lot of people that don't care about this and just want to hear the news.
I think that the more overlooked problem is that local news is too general. There may be a few articles/stories that I really care about, but to read/listen to them I have to sift through everything else.
With everything becoming more and more specialized, if I only care about two areas that the local news reports on, it is almost guaranteed that I will be able to switch to a separate outlet that covers only this. I only care about sports and startups? Cool - I'll subscribe to The Athletic and a TechCrunch newsletter. Now I get what I want without all the fluff around it.
This seems to be a huge problem that will be difficult for local news outlets to solve.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 15.6 ms ] threadThis is true, but there are a lot of people that don't care about this and just want to hear the news.
I think that the more overlooked problem is that local news is too general. There may be a few articles/stories that I really care about, but to read/listen to them I have to sift through everything else.
With everything becoming more and more specialized, if I only care about two areas that the local news reports on, it is almost guaranteed that I will be able to switch to a separate outlet that covers only this. I only care about sports and startups? Cool - I'll subscribe to The Athletic and a TechCrunch newsletter. Now I get what I want without all the fluff around it.
This seems to be a huge problem that will be difficult for local news outlets to solve.