Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media
UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
“You can’t move “to” if you don’t know where you’re starting “from,” and for most news organizations, their current reality, “from” is participation in community harm, neglect, or both.” — Cierra Hinton and Lizzy Hazeltine, from their Anti-Racist Table Stakes…
From our Local NewsBot Studio report, local news audiences are open to engaging with AI, if it’s helpful, honest and relevant.
While public policy initiatives to support local media aren’t new, they are rapidly changing — here’s an overview of where we are now and how we got here.
Local news legislation is growing: Since our last update, 38 news bills were introduced across 15 states, more than the total number of bills introduced in the previous two years combined.
Our newest research experiment is a model we’re proud of: A hands-on, newsroom-centered pilot combining product development with industry-focused research.
Participants gathered on March 16 for a deep dive into one of the industry’s pressing issues: AI’s role in the future of local journalism.
The 2025 workshop highlighted the importance of inclusive, community-engaged research and the importance of connecting this research with the larger journalism field.
“We wanted to test if the general public had the same perception of nonprofit news and what those organizations do as people working in the news industry.”
At CISLM, Mahone has led studies on labor issues, newsroom unionization, information ecosystem mapping and more.
“If I had to pull out one lesson, it would be to be very conscious that people are getting local news from all sorts of different sources, not just local news outlets.”
Here’s how 5 news orgs improved their digital footprint to get their reporting in front of new voting audiences.