The future of local journalism is increasingly being shaped by two fundamental questions: Who should pay for it, and what should it produce?
Those questions were at the center this conversation between E&P Publisher Mike Blinder and media critic, author and journalism educator Jeff Jarvis. The discussion grew out of two recent E&P Reports episodes that sparked debate beyond E&P’s audience: an interview with Rebuild Local News founder Steven Waldman about public policy funding for journalism that drew a response from The Wall Street Journal, and a New York Press Association panel on newsroom cadence, AI and audience expectations that prompted a published rebuttal from publisher Christian Hendricks.
Together, the debates raised larger questions about journalism’s future, sustainability and purpose—questions Jarvis was eager to tackle.
The risks and realities of public support
Jarvis acknowledged that government support for journalism is becoming a larger part of the conversation, but he warned that such support carries significant risks. “I think there’s danger in expecting tax support for journalism,” Jarvis said. “Government can give and government can take away.”
He argued that concerns about editorial independence are not theoretical. “When you have state media already and then you try to act upon trying to get state funds, surely you can see the danger that is right there and apparent,” he said.
Yet Jarvis does not dismiss public support entirely. Instead, he pointed to the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium as a model that attempts to create distance between government funding and editorial control. “If we’re going to do public funding, then I would argue it needs to be something like that,” he said, describing a structure built around independent oversight, mission-driven grants and accountability.
Even then, Jarvis cautioned that any public funding model must work regardless of political leadership. “You better have a formula to protect against becoming state media in Texas or Arkansas or Florida,” he said.
No funding source is without strings
One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was Jarvis’ belief that every revenue source carries potential conflicts. “When I taught students, I taught them every single source of revenue has conflict involved,” he said. “Reader revenue has conflict involved because you’re going to suck up to your readers. Advertising has conflict involved. Government money has conflict involved. Everything has conflict.”
Jarvis argued that journalism’s challenge is not finding a perfect funding source but maintaining clear ethics regardless of who writes the checks. “I’m not trying to say that being profitable is pure or purer,” he said. “But it is more independent.”
He was equally skeptical of philanthropic funding as a long-term solution. “There is no panacea. There is no white knight,” Jarvis said. “We thought Jeff Bezos was a white knight. So much for that. We thought Patrick Soon-Shiong was a white knight. Nope.”
Ultimately, he said, sustainability still comes back to proving value. “We’ve got to earn our way,” Jarvis said. “We’ve got to prove our value to the public we serve.”
Too much content, not enough connection
When the conversation shifted to newsroom cadence and the pressure to publish more frequently, Jarvis challenged the very premise of the debate. “Absolutely, we are burying people in too damn much content,” he said.
Jarvis argued that journalism’s obsession with content production stems from a print-era mindset. “It was a mistake for us to see ourselves in the business of making content,” he said. “The content is a Gutenberg-era notion.”
According to Jarvis, the internet accelerated that problem by rewarding volume. “We got caught in this notion of, ‘We make content. We’re a factory for content,’” he said. “Come the internet and trying to get attention there from Google and from social, we said, let’s make more and more and more content.”
He described newsrooms where journalists spend more time chasing trends than reporting. “The volume of content argument is one we may get pushed into by the current models of online,” he said. “It’s wrong.”
From content to community
Rather than choosing between reach and relevance, Jarvis proposed an entirely different framework. “I’m going to argue my third way, which is that we’re not in the content business,” he said. “We should be in the business of conversation and collaboration and relationships.”
Jarvis pointed to experiments in engagement journalism that bring communities directly into the reporting process. “Imagine if we were truly open to the community, to bring them in so we listen to them and what their needs are, and then we tried to answer those needs,” he said.
That approach, he argued, creates trust in ways that publishing volume never can. “They’re going to trust us more not because we make a lot of content or because we try to guess what they want,” Jarvis said, “but because we are answering their needs.”
For Jarvis, the future of local journalism may look less like a traditional newsroom and more like a community institution embedded in daily life.
Building local news from scratch
Asked how he would build a local news organization today, Jarvis suggested that starting fresh may be easier than trying to reinvent legacy media. “I think it’s possible to do that with a legacy brand,” he said. “But I also think it’s going to be a lot easier in most cases to do it from scratch.”
He pointed to local digital-first operations that remain deeply connected to their communities. “You have these local blogs that just have reporting on the street, care about what matters in people’s lives,” Jarvis said.
He also highlighted Village Media’s approach as a model worth watching. “They don’t see themselves so much as a news company as a community company,” he said.
Ultimately, Jarvis believes local journalism’s future depends less on publishing more content and more on becoming indispensable to the communities it serves. “I think that’s the way to do it,” he said, “go and make sure that you listen to people, you’re responsive to their needs, you’re among them."
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