Yes, newspapers, the institutions we generally think of when considering the state of media, have seen more than their share of declines. However, most of us who care about local news and for a generation have been longing for what was, we are missing what’s taking place right in front of us.
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This headline was the title of a talk I gave to a group of area businesspeople.
I don't normally title my talks, but I thought it appropriate because for the last 30 years, talks about local news have been dour and dire. That's not the case anymore, and people really need to understand that.
Yes, newspapers, the institutions we generally think of when considering the state of media, have seen more than their share of declines. However, most of us who care about local news and for a generation have been longing for what was, we are missing what's taking place right in front of us.
I push back whenever someone says Worcester is a news desert, a misunderstood industry term rooted in describing communities or regions lacking a newspaper. Here's why:
In 2013 Worcester had seven companies whose purposes it was to create and distribute local news and information. (The criteria I used was the company must have employees in or focused specifically on Worcester.).
Fast-forward to 2023. Care to guess how many there were? Given the conventional wisdom, most people I ask reply with a number between two and five.
The answer is 18.
How can that be? Consider this: Among the myriad forces that led to destruction of legacy media at scale, one was the democratization of tools allowing anyone to quickly and inexpensively become a media company and contribute to the community discussion. Want proof? Ask your child or grandchild, "Can you make me a Substack?" and have a stopwatch ready.
It was precisely this explosion in the number of local media companies that led me to tell WBJ for its May 13 two-story series “The new Worcester media” that: “The quality of journalism in the city of Worcester right now is better on a day-in and day-out basis than it has been for 20 years. That gets lost in the fact that it's not just happening because of one entity.”
And that's where the016.com comes in.
It was clear as early as 2011 we would one day be dealing with a multitude of entities serving the community. The problem then, we realized, would be one of discoverability; not everyone with an interest in local news would take the time to search for or be able to find all that local news. In other words, Worcester needed a platform to showcase all that work, so we built a first-of-its kind platform and launched the016.com in January 2019.
So what does the future hold? We’ve witnessed the destruction, we’re seeing the rebuilding, and the range of likely outcomes becomes both fairly predictable and good news for local news.
Mark Henderson is a journalist, technologist, and executive with more than 40 years of media experience. He is the founder and CEO of The 016.
