The public libraries helping save local journalism
With more and more ad revenue going to the likes of Google and Facebook, local journalism is dying a slow and painful death.
In November, we lost Gothamist (and its sister sites, like DCist) after its billionaire owner balked when its journalists tried to unionize. Later that month, LA Weekly was purchased by a group of conservative-leaning private investors who then laid off much of the paper’s staff.
That’s why I was floored by the recent story of a public librarian in New Hampshire launching his own weekly paper. The paper, which he began producing and printing at the library after a community paper shuttered, has been an instant success: more people are showing up to the town events he advertises, and local officials are now emailing him news items.
“We had no way of getting community information, whether it was governmental information, citizen information, or even just arts, social events, those sorts of things. The other thing we really needed to address was a lack of a sense of community,” said the librarian turned part-time newspaper editor.
Turns out he’s not so unusual.
A number of public libraries are helping fill what some are calling “journalism deserts.” Libraries in Dallas have teamed up to teach high schoolers how to gather news. A library in San Antonio offers space to an indie video news site that trains students and runs what the Atlantic called a “C-SPAN-style operation.”
Sure, libraries can’t take the place of the New York Times, but they’re a real life symbol for something much larger: the common good. Not only do they offer books and other media, they also help democratize our communities by ensuring that everyone, no matter their income or the color of their skin, has access to information and other crucial services.
Like the library in St. Paul, Minnesota, that recently hired a social worker rather than a security guard after facing an uptick in abandoned children and visitors experiencing homelessness. Or the one in Denver that trains its staff to administer an anti-overdose nasal spray as the city recoils from the opioid crisis sweeping the country.
I like how writer Zadie Smith puts it in her recent collection of essays: “What a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere. An indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.”
Public libraries might not seem as cool and hip as what’s happening in Silicon Valley, but we need them more than ever.
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Jeremy Mohler does strategic communications for In the Public Interest, a nonprofit that advocates for the democratic control of public goods and services.
He’d love to hear from you: jmohler@inthepublicinterest.org
