Our constellation of local news sites has dimmed
Image by Jon S licensed under Creative Commons.
The Current Newspapers, the tetrad of hyperlocal printed newspapers in Northwest DC, is in bankruptcy. The Gazette newspapers in Maryland closed in 2015. Washington City Paper almost met its end but was rescued by local businessman Mark Ein.
Local news website DCist closed in November (because its owner was unwilling to let sister site Gothamist unionize). Reston Now and ARLnow in Arlington are providing local coverage in those communities, but similar sites in Capitol Hill, Bethesda and Dupont/Logan Circle fizzled. The AOL-supported Patch network of hyperlocal websites is essentially defunct.
Still, our constellation of local news sites has dimmed mightily.
The Post, of course, is winning (well-deserved) awards, but they’ve come for coverage of Donald Trump, national police shootings and the Secret Service. In the movie “The Post,” Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) tells Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) that after publishing the Pentagon Papers, it won’t just be a local rag in D.C. anymore.
He’s mostly talking about going beyond the White House cocktail party circuit rather than actual coverage of the District, but that’s because the latter kind of reporting never comes up in the movie. The Post had considerable metro reporting at that time, and it has some great people reporting locally now, of course. But it’s a smaller operation than it once was, especially in Maryland and Virginia.
What can be done? Continue reading my latest column in the Washington Post, and come to our forum on local journalism on Tuesday, January 30.