Imagine a Community Criticism Readiness Index, a tool to assess whether residents have someone to turn to in times of uncertainty. When faced with questions of identity, impropriety, or anonymity, who would they contact, and how would they share information?
In the 20th century, news organizations were often that go-to ally. What I call “journalism thinking,” shaped by those institutions, proved particularly effective in bridging the gaps where laws, frameworks, or formal institutions fell short. Law enforcement, advocacy groups, government agencies, and attorneys all play critical roles in society—but humans didn’t evolve within legal systems. We evolved within stories.
Journalists, then, have long been storytellers in the service of justice. While their work famously uncovers high crimes, far more often they help communities make sense of their everyday lives. Journalists operate not as enforcers of the law but as mirrors and mediators. Their power comes from an audience relationship built on trust, consistency, and curation.
To construct a Community Criticism Readiness Index, we might survey hundreds of individuals across diverse circumstances:
- What would you do if you observed something you perceived as immoral but not illegal?
- Who would you tell if a neighbor uncovered a brilliant solution to a persistent problem?
- How would you respond to evidence of regulatory capture?
The index would consider input from at-risk populations and privileged groups, spanning communities both traditional and web-based. These subcommunities—rapidly forming thanks to digital organizing tools—need critical eyes as much as any long-standing institution.
What I’ve observed from informal studies is that many communities no longer have the trusted outlet that once played this role: the local newsroom. While national journalism and advocacy at the highest levels have rallied to respond to crises in recent years, the decline of local journalism remains an unresolved and growing threat to civic society. It’s a problem akin to climate change: pervasive, systemic and requiring broad collaboration to address.
Over the past decade, more people have joined the effort to rebuild local journalism, but there is still so much work to be done. And like climate change, market factors will play an essential role in the solutions we find.
This is an essay about the future of local journalism and the approaches we’ll need to sustain it in the decade ahead. If we’re to protect our communities’ ability to criticize, reflect, and rebuild, we need tools like this index—and the local newsrooms that make those tools meaningful.
