In search of a local news solution

By Kyle Pope

For a very brief moment this spring, a few floors below the CJR offices, local journalism found itself back in the spotlight. There stood Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride, himself a product of a local newsroom (Concord Monitor, circulation 20,000), behind a lectern in Columbia’s Pulitzer Hall on April 10, announcing the roster of Pulitzer winners in a year when national politics, and national newspapers, dominated the conversation. And while big stories, and big papers, took home their usual share of prizes, you couldn’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia for local journalism’s heyday as Pride read out the list of winners: East Bay Times. The Charleston Gazette-Mail. The Salt Lake Tribune. The Storm Lake Times. (“I teared up when I got to the entry for The Storm Lake Times,” said Pride, who is leaving his post as prize administrator after this year.) I wish we could tell you that this year’s Pulitzer announcement was the moment local journalism began its long-awaited American comeback, both financially and as a forum for an important national conversation. That, unfortunately, is not the case. This issue of the Columbia Journalism Review is about what has happened—and likely will happen next—to one of America’s great national institutions, its local press.