America’s media system — the infrastructure through which communities learn what their local institutions are doing, what public officials have promised, and what is actually happening in their neighborhoods — has been deteriorating for two decades. The collapse of local journalism, the concentration of platform power, and the hollowing out of public media have created accountability gaps that affect every other civic issue.
This hub is in the early Sentiment stage. The work right now is documenting what is actually happening in specific communities — not debating national policy proposals — and developing a shared picture of the problem grounded in direct experience.
Start Here
Media Reform: An Introduction
What “media reform” means, how the current system is failing, and why this connects to civic organizing more broadly. Start here if you’re new to the hub.
Media Reform: Issue Overview
A detailed look at the scale of local news collapse, the structural causes, the civic consequences, and the current policy landscape. For readers who want the full picture before engaging with individual articles.
Foundation Articles
The Local News Collapse: What It Looks Like on the Ground
The documented scale of closure, the communities most affected, and what the loss of a local paper actually means for residents.
Who Owns the News: Media Consolidation and What It Means for Communities
How consolidation by hedge funds, private equity, and broadcasting conglomerates has accelerated the collapse and reduced genuine local editorial control.
The Civic Accountability Gap: What Disappears When Local Journalism Does
What local journalism historically produced — coverage of city councils, school boards, courts, zoning — and what the research shows about what happens when that coverage disappears.
Platform Power and the Advertising Collapse: How Google and Meta Hollowed Out Local News
The structural shift that destroyed the advertising revenue model local papers depended on, and what the platform concentration of digital advertising has meant for local journalism’s ability to survive.
What Media Reform Could Look Like: A Survey of Current Proposals
The range of approaches being actively debated — public funding, antitrust, local ownership rules, platform transparency — and the disagreements among them.
Join the Conversation
This hub’s forum space is where the Sentiment stage takes place. If you have direct experience with local news loss, news deserts, platform-driven disinformation, or public media funding — as a reader, a former journalist, a local official, or anyone else with firsthand knowledge — that experience is what this hub is designed to surface.