Really want to fix local news, mayor?

Mayor de Blasio has the same First Amendment right we all have to complain about news coverage. But the mayor’s concerns about “tabloid culture” and the impact of “corporate media” on democracy won’t fix the fundamental problem with New York’s local journalism: There isn’t enough of it, by a long shot.

I’d like the mayor to join us in trying to repair that.

Both the left and the right have critiques of news media that deserve attention. But the basic problem in local news is not, as the mayor suggested, political distortions by corporate-owned media. It is that the business model of those media corporations has been blown to smithereens and no one has yet found a replacement that supports the level or quality of local journalism they used to support.

Local news coverage is in decline almost everywhere. The rise of what are being called news deserts is a national crisis. There is growing evidence that without local journalism, communities spin apart. Corruption goes uncaught. Important institutions, public and private, are not held to account.

One new study found that when local coverage declines, local government pays more to borrow, apparently because no one is watching how the borrowed money is being spent. That finding lands hard here in the newspaper that authored the most famous headline in the history of municipal finance.

Everyone still remembers “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” But not everyone remembers that the headline sprouted from a large and continuing body of coverage by a team of Daily News reporters assigned to the city’s fiscal crisis. They competed fiercely every day against The New York Times, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and others. President Gerald Ford wasn’t happy with the coverage, either, but the public was well served. That was 1975. The mayor says the media is stuck in the ’70s and ’80s. Journalism wasn’t perfect then, either, of course. Yes, we can find the roots of a snarky and shallow tabloidism that went on to infect our national conversation. But the dominant fact of local journalism back then is that there was a lot of it. Hundreds of reporters competed with each other. In Queens alone, The News had two education reporters, and two more in Brooklyn.

Newsday launched an incursion into the city that roused The New York Times into a major expansion of metro coverage.

That’s all gone now. The Times and Newsday are ghosts of what they once were in terms of coverage of New York City. The News tries hard every day. But there is only so much that can be done with a staff so severely reduced.

If the mayor would like to see better coverage — and as New Yorkers, we all should want that — there are some very clear things he can do to help.

First, he can make the case that quality local journalism is not a luxury but an essential service. The test is not whether coverage makes the mayor or any one of us happy. The test is whether it makes us better informed as citizens.

Reporting costs money. Local journalism doesn’t cost more than other types, but its audience is generally smaller, which means less chance to make money from advertisers or subscriptions. We need new sources of support.

Some people have proposed creating special fees, like water and school fees, to raise money for public-service journalism. A debate about that might galvanize public interest. The market will not fix this.

In the meantime, we need civic-minded individuals and philanthropists to step up and fill the breach. At the recent CUNY Journalism School annual dinner, I urged every foundation with roots in New York to channel 2% of its overall giving to support local journalism.

Every New Yorker, even those of modest means, should be part of this. Support news organizations in your communities, like BKLYNER, the Norwood News, New York Public Radio and the tapestry of local and ethnic outlets across New York. Also, subscribe to the Daily News or another citywide newspaper. Our strongest future will be a blend of commercial and not-for-profit news.

The mayor is right: New York deserves and needs better coverage. He can help make that happen by focusing his obvious passion for this on encouraging every New Yorker to be part of the solution. Make New York what it has so often been before: a laboratory for solving a national challenge.