A few years ago, I became the local news beat reporter. 

I wanted to cover the transformation of a struggling industry, see how legacy newsrooms coped with profound economic decline and how they shifted more fully to digital journalism. I wanted to share what was working so other newsrooms could do it, too. 

I chronicled those stories, and along the way found plenty to be hopeful about in local news: a movement to listen to audiences; approaches to new ways to fund local news; experiments in keeping audiences; the creation of newsrooms and beats that reflect communities; and with the pandemic, an urgent understanding outside of journalism about why local news is so important.

True: We’ve lost thousands of jobs, nearly 100 newsrooms, and a lot of good journalists during the pandemic. 

Also true: Journalists are mobilizing and unionizing in record numbers and are dedicated to doing critical work. 

The changes since I started this beat in 2016 are stunning and go well past “digital transformation.” In Oakland, California, The Oaklandside is building a newsroom with a panel of community advisers “to ensure we stay true to our founding values.” In Eudora, Kansas, a journalism school class brought local news back to a community that lost it. And at the Los Angeles Times, Tyrone Beason’s My Country is showing our country’s scars through storytelling.

In focusing on the big picture of saving local journalism, we sometimes look past the local journalists and communities that are saving themselves. 

Next week, I’m starting a new role on Poynter’s teaching team to work with local journalists in a new way.

Though I won’t be a daily reporter, I will continue to be a conduit to my colleagues for tips and stories (so keep em’ coming). I will continue writing Poynter’s Local Edition newsletter. I’m hoping what I hear from you will guide the teaching I create. 

My new focus will be on teaching and bringing people and resources together. Here’s what I think that will include:

- Training early-career journalists on the core skills they need as they learn to cover their communities. That includes beat building, source management and how to manage up.

- I will incorporate the business of journalism into skills training. We need to build a new generation that’s fluent in business models, how work supports the bottom line and how to approach that work nimbly in rapidly changing times.

- I’ll continue teaching work/life chemistry and hope to expand it to other Poynter programs. Reframing work/life balance has helped women in newsrooms around the world figure out what drives them and how to protect it. If ever we needed more of that approach, it’s now.

- And, using what I’ve learned in bringing back regular feature obituaries for the Tampa Bay Times, I plan to create training that helps journalists and editors build templates for making their passion projects real and measuring their success. 

I will continue writing obits for the Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns, and working on a weekly obits newsletter as a freelancer. The three years I’ve worked with the Times have offered daily reminders of why this work matters and what local newsrooms are up against. I’m grateful to keep doing it.

There’s a lot left to cover on the local news beat, from federal legislation to support local newsrooms to still-profitable community newsrooms to the startup Davids standing against hedge fund Goliaths. My colleagues on Poynter’s news team will stay on those stories. 

I’m excited (and nervous) to take on this new job, but I’m building it off what I’ve learned in five years covering local news, eight years as a media reporter and 18 years as a journalist. 

One of those lessons: Local news is not merely a rung on the ladder of a great career. It’s a place to build something that matters to you and your community. 

Kristen