First Aid for the Local News Emergency with Local News Accelerator Mackenzie Warren (Northwestern University)

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media

The news business has been in freefall, as every listener to In Reality is aware. The plunge has been steepest in local journalism. We lose two local news outlets a week, on average. Half the counties in America have only one news outlet or none at all. 

Dousing that five alarm fire is the mission of today’s guest, Mackenzie Warren, director of the Local News Accelerator at Northwestern University’s Medill School, hands down one of the premier journalism schools in the country. Mackenzie is a long-time local newspaper executive himself; at Medill, he now helps local newsrooms in Illinois discover innovations aimed at putting themselves on a path to sustainability. Mackenzie joined Eric recently at his class on the future of media at the University of Chicago. 

They discussed the role of local news in counteracting polarization, the incoming class of new journalists and how they view their careers, as well as a few bright stars in the local news firmament, like the Minnesota Star Tribune, Chicago’s hyper-local Block Club and Atlanta Journal Constitution.

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Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
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Alliance for Trust in Media
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