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Raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember being asked whether your house subscribed to The Indianapolis Star or The Indianapolis News.
It’s hard to believe it’s been a quarter-century since our city had the readership to support two daily newspapers—one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
For years, the narrative surrounding local news has been one of decline. Shrinking advertising revenue, the nationalization of news content and the rise of social media all seemed to spell doom for ink-by-the-barrel outlets that historically chronicled local communities.
But here in Indianapolis over the last few years, something incredible is happening: Local journalism is experiencing a resurgence, and we should all take a minute to celebrate.
Hyperlocal online publications have been cropping up across the city, focusing on specific neighborhoods, policy areas and community interests. Not only are there far more digital outlets than there ever were in print form, they are fostering a sense of connection and belonging that citywide papers often struggle to achieve.
At the risk of omitting an outlet, the rundown of who’s doing local “print” news these days includes IBJ, Axios Indianapolis, Mirror Indy, IndyStar and the Indianapolis Recorder. Chalkbeat Indiana specifically covers education stories.
Zooming out, there are a number of online statewide outlets doing yeoman’s work in the political space: Indiana Capital Chronicle, Public News Service, The Statehouse File and State Affairs Indiana.
Free Press Indiana, which launched Mirror Indy, is dedicated to investing in journalism around the state and encouraging Indiana outlets to amplify local journalism for all Hoosiers, especially in underserved communities.
It’s worth noting that local radio and television stations, which used to focus most of their resources on on-air content, have upped their game over the past decade, adding talented online reporting teams and producing stories throughout the day to augment their regular broadcasts.
The best part about all these outlets fresh to the local journalism scene isn’t just that they are creating lots of content; they’re also sharing each other’s stories.
This cross-pollination accomplishes two goals: readers of one outlet become aware of other outlets and the content they are covering, and the outlets themselves aren’t obsessively trying to best each other covering the same stories.
Digital outlets also are leveraging “documenters” who are trained to take notes at public meetings, making it easier to cover stories that often get overlooked at zoning board hearings, school board meetings, public safety decisions and more.
All of this is a very good thing for democracy, which operates best when it operates in the sunlight. If we don’t know what our government and elected officials are up to, it’s nearly impossible to hold them accountable.
It feels like local journalism, seemingly beaten by an unsustainable print-and-deliver business model, is once again hitting its stride, with new outlets and voices at the table and more in the pipeline.
Speaking of which, I’d be remiss if I didn’t close out thanking the IBJ for letting me dedicate space to a conversation about its direct and indirect competitors in the marketplace. Thankfully, there’s more than enough news to go around, and that competition is going to make our community stronger.•
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Chartier is a lifelong Indianapolis resident and owner of Mass Ave Public Relations. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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Great article. The rise of “alternative” journalism was a predictable result when the “traditional” media transformed from reporting the news to being the arbiter of the news and the “truth”. And the IBJ can be applauded. Every week contains stories I totally agree and disagree with. But I read them all. And that is how it should be!