Social media is a public soapbox, so don't expect anonymity. But CNN created more controversy by shielding identity https://t.co/JQI7l0J1bG
— Indira Lakshmanan (@Indira_L) July 5, 2017
Free-press orgs make plans to increase documentation of US media restrictions and threats https://t.co/QPrZzsDOVx https://t.co/ZgmwyF4h4k
— Mediagazer (@mediagazer) July 5, 2017
Redditor behind Trump/CNN wrestling clip issues apology, prompts #CNNBlackmail hashtag https://t.co/ihRl5UEz58 pic.twitter.com/TATnFDwK4G
— HuffPost Media (@HuffPostMedia) July 5, 2017
For a very brief moment this spring, a few floors below the CJR offices, local journalism found itself back in the spotlight. There stood Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride, himself a product of a local newsroom (Concord Monitor, circulation 20,000), behind a lectern in Columbia’s Pulitzer Hall on April 10, announcing the roster of Pulitzer winners in a year when national politics, and national newspapers, dominated the conversation. And while big stories, and big papers, took home their usual share of prizes, you couldn’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia for local journalism’s heyday as Pride read out the list of winners: East Bay Times. The Charleston Gazette-Mail. The Salt Lake Tribune. The Storm Lake Times. (“I teared up when I got to the entry for The Storm Lake Times,” said Pride, who is leaving his post as prize administrator after this year.) I wish we could tell you that this year’s Pulitzer announcement was the moment local journalism began its long-awaited American comeback, both financially and as a forum for an important national conversation. That, unfortunately, is not the case. This issue of the Columbia Journalism Review is about what has happened—and likely will happen next—to one of America’s great national institutions, its local press.
PHOTOGRAPHER WILL STEACY set out in 2009 to “tell an inspiring story of a newsroom”—that of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which made its home on North Broad Street, inside the “Tower of Truth,” for nearly 90 years. However, Steacy’s project took an...