Local journalism has received a rare shot in the arm in New Jersey, after the state voted to grant $5m to a local news project that backers believe could serve as a model for the rest of the country.

New Jersey politicians approved a bill in the latest state budget to create an independent “civic information consortium”, which will have $5m to spend on various types of local news coverage.

Those behind the project say politicians will have no say over stories or journalism, which will focus on communities bereft of local news sources.

The bill, which is now awaiting the signature of New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, is the result of two years of research and effort by the Free Press Action Fund, non-partisan non-profit dedicated to providing access to technology and information.

“We held 10 forums around the state last year, in all different types of communities, really just asking people what the state of local news was for them,” said Mike Rispoli, New Jersey state director of the Free Press Action Fund.

“People who didn’t have a local news source felt like they were being left in the dark and they didn’t know what was going on at their city council meeting, or who to vote for, or what was going on in their schools.”



News outlets across the country have been forced to shed staff and in some cases close, as the internet has gobbled up newspaper sales and advertising revenues. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the number of people employed by newspaper publishing companies in America has fallen from 458,000 in 1990 to just 183,000 in 2016.

Rispoli said that New Jersey, sandwiched between the major media markets of New York and Philadelphia, has traditionally relied on local newspapers rather than television news, so the state has been hit particularly hard by journalism’s decline.

“What we found pretty quickly was that there were tons of communities that had little to no coverage whatsoever, and they wanted to change something,” Rispoli said. “It wasn’t just a matter of: ‘Well I’ll subscribe to my local newspaper, that’ll fix the problem’, because there was no local newspaper.”

The Civic Information Consortium will be run by a board including academics from The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University and Rutgers University.

Two state politicians will also serve on the board, but Lou Greenwald, the majority leader of the New Jersey state assembly, said there will be no political interference should, for example, a journalist uncover a story about the state government.

“The check and balance system, from the court system, all the way to the White House and everything in between, I think the free press and our first amendment right are key components of that.” said Greenwald, who was a co-sponsor of the legislation.

“So that’s not really that’s not something that I have a concern about.”

The consortium will invite pitches from journalists later this year. Greenwald said it could be a lone journalist pledging to cover a specific geographical area, to a group who would partner with one of the five universities to dive into data or mine information on a set topic.



Greenwald and Rispoli are hopeful that the project can eventually sustain itself. Rispoli said the Civic Information Consortium can “serve as a model to other states when it comes to addressing the local news crisis”.

He said: “And it’s not just about saving journalism, it’s about supporting the civic health of our communities. Study after study has shown what happens when local news is deficient or disappears altogether. Civic participation drops. Fewer people run for public office, fewer people volunteer.”

Rispoli went on: “It is absolutely necessary in our view that something is done to help and to help ensure that communities have the news information that they need, so that they can participate in democracy and be civically engaged.”