Steven Waldman is the founder of Rebuild Local News, a nonpartisan organization working to create a stronger and more inclusive local press.
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RSSSteven Waldman started his career in legacy media, working with publications such as US News & World Report and Newsweek. He left in the early 2000’s to start a website in the web 1.0 era. His career trajectory changed when he worked on a report for the FCC about the impact of the digital revolution on the news industry.
The report that Steven worked on showed something surprising: it wasn’t the big national press outlets who were going to be heavily impacted by the internet, it was the smaller local publishers who would be hit the hardest. Unfortunately this turned out to be all too true.
Since that report in 2011, there are 60% fewer full time reporters in the US, and thousands of publishers have gone out of business, leaving ever widening news deserts in their wake.
Steven has been an advocate for sustainable journalism since first reading that report over a decade ago. He worked with Report for America for 5 years, placing journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.
He then went on to found Rebuild Local News, a nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition pushing to save local journalism.
In this episode of Small Press, Big Ideas, Steven talks about data that shows the damage a lack of local information can cause, such as increased polarization, corruption, decreases in local investment and even increased pollution.
He talks about how the crisis was well under way before social media came into the picture. He also talks about the tremendous innovation in the space that offers hope such as digital native hyperlocal websites and the hundreds of new non profits in the space, as well as the disturbing trend of ‘pink slime’ websites.
Listen to the full episode by searching Small Press, Big Ideas in your podcast player of choice, or in the player above.