Opinion America should spend billions to revive local news
By Perry Bacon Jr.
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My vision for addressing the huge decline in local journalism involves hiring 87,000 new journalists for about 1,300 news organizations with more than $10 billion in funding. Such a massive investment in local news isn’t going to happen next week and probably not next year, either.

But it is also not a pipe dream. There is a growing recognition that the collapse of local news and information is a crisis undermining the United States’ politics and communities. Ten billion isn’t much money for the United States to spend on something the nation defines as a crisis. Millions of dollars are already being pumped into reviving local journalism, although right now that’s largely limited to a few major cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia.

He has a do-able idea. That doesn’t mean it will happen. Or be implemented in red counties. But it’s an idea to a major problem.