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“What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,” by Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy, takes a close-up look at independent local and regional news organizations that are overcoming the local news crisis and providing their communities with the journalism they need to govern themselves in a democratic society.

Clegg and Kennedy traveled across the country — from New Haven, Connecticut, to Mendocino County California, and from Storm Lake, Iowa, to Memphis, Tennessee — to report on nonprofit and for-profit ventures, digital outlets, print newspapers and broadcast stations serving urban and rural areas, affluent towns and communities of color, hyperlocal ventures and statewide projects. What they found is that there is no one solution to the decline of local journalism — but that, in many places, grassroots efforts are proving remarkably resilient.

“[T]here are signs that things are looking up,” wrote Serge Schmemann in The New York Times. “In their book, Ms. Clegg and Mr. Kennedy chronicle various ways in which local and regional news organizations — whether paper, digital or radio — are trying to restore local coverage. Most are nonprofits, often assisted by a number of foundations that assist news start-ups. It’s not a flood, but what is certain, they write, ‘is that the bottom-up growth of locally based news organizations has already provided communities with news that would otherwise go unreported.’”

In a starred review for The Booklist, Alan Moores said: “For readers who despair at the collapse of traditional media nationwide, this survey is a bolster; for journalists looking to create such viable news sources in their own communities, its a highly useful road map.”

“What Works in Community News” will be published by Beacon Press in January 2024.

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