PRESS ADVISORY: On Friday, Join a Discussion About the Ways Local Media Can Serve People in a Time of Crisis

WASHINGTON — Communities across the country lack the local news and information they need to stay safe, organized and connected. But there is a growing movement to do something about it. Free Press Action and its partners in the Media Power Collaborative have released an ambitious framework that journalists and community members can unite behind: Local News for the People: A Policy Agenda for Meeting Civic-Information Needs.

Join a webinar this Friday to learn more about what journalists, advocates and news outlets are doing to support independent journalism during a time of crisis for our democracy.  

During the webinar, experts from the field will discuss how their communities are responding to news-coverage gaps and calling on local, state and federal lawmakers to treat local news like the public good it is. This work is built around supporting both communities and journalists — and cultivating the emerging civic-media space that has arisen amid threats to a free press and the collapse of commercial newspapers across the country. 

As state and local lawmakers debate policy solutions to support local news — and as corporate greed and attacks from the Trump administration threaten independent journalism — Local News for the People provides concrete recommendations for how to build the media system we need to meet this era of political crisis. 

Please join our panel of experts and advocates as we discuss the crucial work of civic media in this moment, and the policy changes that we need to put local news back in the hands of the people.

What: Local News in Times of Crisis: How Civic Media Is Rising to the Moment
When: Fri., March 14, at 2 p.m. ET
Who: Mike Rispoli (moderator), Free Press Action's senior director of journalism and civic information; Candice Fortman, former executive director of Outlier Media and Knight journalism fellow at Stanford; Kate Harloe, freelance journalist and writer, and member of the Freelance Solidarity Project at the National Writers Union; Carla Murphy, journalist, media organizer and assistant professor at Rutgers University-Newark; and Mazin Sidahmed, co-executive director of Documented.

RSVP: bit.ly/fpampcpress