Editorâs letter
Who will be left to report on the crisis of local news? Itâs a troubling question. While a few major national outlets have prospered, in much of the country local reporting is disappearing as large papers retrench and small ones shut down. A great part of this is happening under the radar, because after the lights are turned off, there is nobody left to write the story. In this weekâs Last Word, though, journalist Will Oremus reports on whatâs happening in his town as the Nextdoor app steadily takes over as the main outlet for local news. Itâs worth reading in full, but the quick takeaway is that what Facebook has done to the national discourse is even worse in Nextdoorâs local versions of that model. There is no town too small for polarization and misinformation to dominate. Sadly, there is increasingly no alternative source of local news.