With the recent closure of DNAInfo and the “-ist” network (Gothamist, Chicagoist, etc) by its billionaire owner, allegedly in a fit of pique over a vote to unionise, there has been more focus on challenges of local news. To me, this is the real crisis in journalism in the English-speaking world. The economic basis for local journalism, advertising, has come under extreme pressure as print subscriptions decline and Facebook and Google gobble up more of the digital advertising pie.

In a recent edition of my newsletter, I flagged up this interesting quote from Patch CEO Warren St. John, who told Axios:

“is that economically, good local news isn’t be designed to serve national or scaled interests, and the driving forces behind it need to come from the community level with community interests.”

This seems to run entirely counter to the consolidation in local news right now, but as local news becomes regionalised by groups focused on cost-cutting and efficiencies of an already lean business, there are opportunities opening up for local scale news businesses. The next few years will be interesting to watch. I predict a lot of experiments in communities smaller than 100,000 that aren’t close to larger metro areas.