Philanthropic organizations trying to meaningfully fund local news are running up against challenges that another group — local news researchers — have been grappling with for some time. As currently structured, research into the state of local news in the United States struggles to keep pace with the scale, and speed, of changes to the landscape. Since at least 2023, local news researchers have informally discussed the need for more coordination and collaboration in the field to improve research, and make their work more efficient. But within the past year, a coalition of scholars across the country have taken action by creating the Local News Impact Consortium, which aims to elevate, standardize, and expand local news research — while making that research more practically useful outside of academia.
“A lot of people assume that there is some list somewhere of all the local news outlets in particular places,” said Benjamin Toff, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, and vice chair of the consortium’s executive team. “And that just doesn’t exist.”
Toff leads the consortium along with executive committee chair Damon Kiesow, the Knight chair of journalism innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism, and treasurer Matthew Weber, professor at Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information. The consortium’s steering committee also includes scholars at Northwestern’s Medill, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oregon, and Syracuse University. The Knight Foundation committed $250,000 in seed funding. That funding will be divided among consortium member institutions, which will use it in the coming months “to demonstrate proof of concept and workability,” Toff said.
