Central Florida must unite to preserve local journalism
As we head into the thick of election season, do you know where your facts are?
My vision is for a Central Florida region united by a shared set of facts. This usually prompts an eye roll or a rueful laugh. But if there’s one thing I know from a long career in local journalism, it’s this: trusted facts delivered by trusted messengers are critical if we hope to heal our society’s divisions and protect our democracy.
Our divisions have complex roots, but the decline of trusted local journalism is one of the deepest. Numerous studies have proven it: when local news disappears, misinformation and partisan rhetoric fill the void.
For the past 20 years, the quantity and quality of local journalism in this country have been in free fall. Trustworthy journalism is not free, and the business model that supported it for generations has collapsed. Instead of looking back to the days when communities had a single dominant news source, we must look forward.
Central Florida’s local news organizations must work together, along with our local philanthropic and business leaders, to build and support the strong, sustainable local journalism ecosystem our region deserves. Future-proofing access to trustworthy, independent news and information requires our community to invest in local journalism like it invests in education, health care, the arts and social services.
Why? Because communities with strong local news are more connected and civically active, with higher participation in down-ballot elections and in groups like the PTA and the neighborhood watch. Government and corporate corruption is lower in these communities, and so is the cost of municipal borrowing.
In recent years, 1,800 towns across the country have lost their only local news source. Fewer than half as many reporters are covering their communities compared to two decades ago. Local outlets are being snatched up by profit-driven companies with no local connection and no interest in supporting and preserving a free press.
At Central Florida Public Media, we are proud to be moving in the opposite direction. We continue to be entirely locally owned and operated. We have tripled our ranks of local journalists over the past 13 years, adding four new positions in the past year alone, along with two new local news programs, Engage and The Wrap.
Even with those investments, we can’t rebuild and sustain our local journalism ecosystem by ourselves. Almost 90% of our budget comes from Central Florida residents and businesses that have supported our mission for more than four decades. Some for-profit news outlets are now looking to public media’s funding model as a possible way out of the local news crisis, but success will not come from dividing the same funding pie into smaller and smaller pieces.
Rebuilding local journalism will require a significant investment on a much larger scale. A new national initiative is pointing the way. Last year, a group of visionary organizations launched Press Forward with the ambitious goal of raising $500 million to rebuild local journalism.
Since then, 17 communities around the country have started local Press Forward chapters — including one in South Florida. These chapters are led by community-based foundations that recognize the importance of local journalism to democracy and civic life.
For this to work, those of us in local news must do a better job of building community trust through transparency. We must demystify the ethics and rigorous editorial processes that differentiate professional journalists from bloggers and social-media influencers. We must become more proactive about understanding and responding to our community’s news and information needs. At Central Florida Public Media, “listening” is written into our vision statement, and it has nothing to do with our podcasts or radio frequencies.
If we embrace this new model in Central Florida, we will rebuild our local journalism ecosystem and allow our community to unite around that shared set of trusted facts. We will foster respectful debate and even collaboration among people who see the world differently. We will once again be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
This solution cannot wait years or even months. We must act now because the health of our democracy and civil society depend on it.
Judith Smelser is the president and general manager of Central Florida Public Media, formerly known by its radio call letters WMFE. The outlet provides local, national and international news, conversation and NPR content on cfpublic.org, 90.7 WMFE, 89.5 WMFV, and on social media and podcast platforms.