Without Transformative Local Media, Our Communities Are Vulnerable

As we feel our way through the political haze following Donald Trump’s reelection to the White House, one underlying reality is clear: In the fight for control over our political system and economy, the ultrarich are winning — and they’re winning by a lot.

The day after the election, the 10 richest people in the world increased their wealth by roughly $64 billion, the largest daily increase since Bloomberg started tracking these figures in 2012. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. While working- and middle-class people struggle to pay rent or buy a home, private equity firms are snatching up houses and apartment buildings. While families turn to food stamps and parents are forced to skip meals, conglomerates like Kroger are raising grocery prices and reaping the profits.

To create a just and sustainable future for the working and middle classes, we need to break the billionaires’ tightening grip over our democracy and economy — and that should start with loosening their hold over our local media system.

Acting Locally

Creating strong structures for local news and civic information isn’t usually at the top of the list for progressive movement leaders, but it’s a crucial part of the work that lies ahead. When the actions laid out in Project 2025 come to our towns and cities — mass deportation, eviscerated environmental protections, and cuts to education and housing programs — our ability to weather the storm and lay the groundwork for what comes next will depend on how organized and connected we are. Whether it’s tenant unions, labor unions, mutual-aid networks or any other kind of community organizing, we’ll need to create strong multiracial coalitions at the local level that bridge the interests of the working and middle classes.

It will be exceptionally difficult to pull this off if we don’t know what’s happening in our neighborhoods and in the halls of power. The future of our democracy requires a media system that speaks to people’s needs and serves those who are organizing for the safety and prosperity of their communities.

This is not the local media system that we currently have. The same forces that are breaking our democracy have decimated our local news environment. Corporate chains and hedge funds have taken over thousands of community media outlets, hollowing out their newsrooms. The collapse of commercial newspapers has been expedited by the relentless growth of giant tech platforms, whose owners have established a firm grip over the information economy. For all their promises of connection and democratized debate, these platforms are instead conduits for misinformation and polarization.

Pair these developments with an ongoing legacy of racism and harm — within both our media institutions and the governmental bodies charged with overseeing them — and what are we left with? A news system focused on profits instead of community needs, and a nationwide media landscape that too often pushes fear instead of hope, disengagement instead of connection, and national headlines instead of actionable local information.

Building a Blueprint for the Trump Years

Critically, we’re left with a severe deficit of the kind of information we need most: relevant, verifiable, and trusted news that empowers us to improve our lives and strengthen our communities. Research has shown that this deficit most acutely impacts communities of color, rural communities, Spanish-speaking communities and impoverished communities — in other words, the backbone of the working-class United States.

As movement leaders assemble a blueprint for the coming Trump years — both to protect people in the short term and to rebuild our democracy over the long haul — it is absolutely essential that this planning include a structural reimagining of our local media system.

Most immediately, that means bolstering state and local protections for journalists. The incoming administration has signaled its intention to undermine long-held press freedoms, and of particular concern are Trump’s repeated threats on the campaign trail to jail reporters who refuse to identify confidential sources. We must prepare for the likelihood that journalists will be targeted — especially those who engage with and are a part of Black, immigrant and queer communities. As policy makers work to shore up civil liberty defenses, ensuring that local media workers can do their job safely should be a priority. This should include the enactment of strong anti-SLAPP statutes, which protect journalists (and especially those who work with smaller outlets) from costly lawsuits aimed at chilling investigation and First Amendment-protected speech. State lawmakers should also codify protections for journalists’ work material and their sources — a strong template can be found in the PRESS Act at the federal level.

More broadly, we must build a grassroots movement of civic media leaders and community leaders who can work together to structurally transform our local media system. Significant federal policy action is almost certainly off the table for at least the next four years. But there is immense opportunity at the local and state levels to build a framework for the media system of the future, particularly in places where policy makers are able to hold the line effectively against authoritarian pressures.

That could mean the creation of independent grantmaking bodies for local news at the state and local levels, firewalled from the government and potentially funded by small fees on the immense revenues of tech platforms. It could mean incentivizing local ownership and local investment in media outlets. It could (and should) mean supporting media workers’ efforts to unionize, an essential protection for newsroom staff who are working to hold wealthy owners accountable. It could even look like increased funding for libraries, community colleges, community media centers, and other trusted local institutions that can serve as hubs for civic education and media literacy.

Putting Media Power in the Hands of Communities

The policy outcomes will vary. The important thing is for community leaders and media workers to coalesce behind a shared vision that treats local news and civic information like the public goods they are. In doing so, we can reclaim our local news from giant platforms, corporate chains and hedge funds. We can put media power into the hands of our communities and weaken the firm grip that billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (owner of The Washington Post), the Murdochs (who control Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), the Sinclairs (of the Sinclair Broadcast Group) and Patrick Soon-Shiong (owner and executive chair of the Los Angeles Times) have over our information ecosystem.

Our collective well-being depends on our ability to work with our neighbors and hold power to account. If we can build a transformed local media system that serves this country’s working- and middle-class communities, we might just be on our way to creating a democracy that serves all of us, not just the richest of the rich.