The corporate media era is ending. Do we care enough about our country to figure out what is next?

Tronc drop-kicked half the staff of the New York Daily News Monday — slashing in half the staff of a major-market newspaper. From 400 staffers not that long ago to just 45 or so, the tabloid-style paper is a shell of its self.

It is just the latest in a long line of depressing tales from corporate media.

The Columbia Journalism Review published an excellent piece talking about the fallout from this and so many other cuts over the years.

This line resonated with me.

(I)t’s pointless to spend our energy vilifying corporate cost-cutters.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the moves by companies like Tronc, Sinclair, Alden Global Capital, Gannett and more. Evil. Deceitful. Immoral.

All are probably true to some degree. But it is wasted energy. The companies are operating within the bounds of the law, and more to the point — are doing what is in their charter: serving shareholders.

Newspapers are being gutted. Television stations are next (bury your head in the sand if you must, but cord cutting is accelerating — and that means a fast erosion of retransmission dollars for local television stations… and digital won’t grow to make up for it).

Instead of getting bogged down in the problems of the current situation — we as an industry and as a society — must start to think about what comes next.

The choice seems binary. No local journalism means the downfall of democracy, right?

To me, local journalism serves many functions — but few are as important than holding the powerful accountable. Without local journalists, political and corporate interests can increasingly carry the day, and their interests are not always aligned with the broader public.

We have to work on what’s next. This was the focus of my work as a 2018 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Here are a few things percolating that excite me:

• Small hyper-local startups. The Local Independent Online News Publishers coalition has hundreds of members, covering a diverse set of cities, towns and beats. These organizations are experimenting, adjusting and trying to build sustainable models to help add journalistic resources into the void.
• College journalism programs are in some cases working to fill the gaps left by shrinking traditional resources. By using a crop of students to work beats and cover topics, these outlets can provide a small army of writers to dig out scoops. While they may lack the experience of a seasoned veteran, these students have energy and the incentive to earn college credit to do solid work.
• JSK colleagues JulieAnn McKellogg and Adriano Farano have started Pactio — a platform to help independent journalists find audience funding to cover important topics. Initial reporters include Seema Yasmin who is a doctor-turned-journalist (and another JSK Fellow) who aims to cover medical science with an expert’s pedigree and an accessible style.
• Another JSK colleague Phillip Smith is launching a ten-week bootcamp to help turn journalists into entrepreneurs. While solving the problem will likely take help from folks with skills beyond the traditional journalism toolkit, Phillip’s idea can help infuse good reporters with some of the things they need to run a business and start covering topics that are being left alone by shrinking corporate media newsrooms.
• As I outlined last month, we may need to think big and beyond current ideas and solutions. I put together a thought exercise which considered building a nationwide endowment to fund journalists in ever US community in perpetuity. The idea strikes some as fanciful — but it’s important to go beyond our current concepts if we are going to continue to provide communities with strong local journalism.

Banking on the current system of funding local coverage is foolish at this point. As that CJR article noted — we have reached the “death spiral” phase of corporate journalism. If we care about our democracy, we will work together (journalists, citizens, entrepreneurs and philanthropists) to figure out what is next.

Don Day is a 2018 Stanford John S. Knight Fellow. He has twenty years experience in media — leading teams, producing award-winning journalism and innovating in the digital journalism space. He currently is the publisher of BoiseDev.com.