By Shane Mukasa

From Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Kelmer’s 18th century transformation of the Pennsylvania Gazette to the hard-hitting journalism that covers the milestones and phenomena of our lives today, reporting has become a means for communities to understand the world around them. Whether it’s the talk of the town or a little league game, there’s something special about a local story that shows the humanity in all of us.

Recent years have seen the unfortunate and uncertain side effects of waning local journalism. In 2025, only 21% of Americans said that they follow local news very closely and only 8% said that they preferred getting their news from a local paper. The Star-Ledger, once a bustling newspaper based in Newark, NJ, closed its print operations in 2025. According to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick report, New Jersey lost more than 100 local media outlets statewide between 2020 and 2025. Does this spell the end of local journalism; outclassed by its cooler, hipper social media site counterparts? 

“Everything you do, especially in this business is important.” Says Rich Rein, a longtime New Jersey journalist. Rein’s career, which spans six decades, began in 1965. As a student writer for The Daily Princeton, Rein oversaw coverage of major American historical moments like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. In 1984 he founded U.S. 1, a local business and entertainment journal that he ran for over three decades before stepping down in 2019. Today Rein edits TAPinto Princeton, a digital-only publication that covers the politics, arts, and life in the town of Princeton. 

Rein refers to the process of assembling stories for TAPinto Princeton as “putting together a smorgasbord.” To Rein, the story of a cat stuck in a tree, and the team of fifth graders who created a “human chain” to rescue the cat, demonstrates everything right about local media. Stories like this, written by local reporters, don’t just highlight the tribulations of a town, but also the niches that make a town unique. 

“We really do a service to the community,” says Anne Levin, a longtime local reporter who writes for Town Topics and Princeton Magazine. Publications like Town Topics, and others like it, operate at smaller numbers than in their glory day. Town Topics is a weekly, print-only newspaper that depends on the work of experienced journalists. In the past, the paper’s younger interns have moved on after two years. “As they should,” Levin said. The industry that Levin joined six decades ago is changing. The Washington Post recently laid off one-third of its workforce and scaled back its local news reporting. These developments reflect a shift in priorities for media outlets looking to stay alive in an increasingly competitive media landscape.

These changes threaten an institution historically dedicated to covering communities and defending the truth. How can local media survive and thrive in this environment? This is a question that Ayinde Merill, a program officer for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, is trying to answer. The Consortium works to support and sustain local reporting by funding local publications and projects that support small newsrooms, as well as programs that train students and community members to become storytellers and newsroom reporters. A vast majority of the Consortium’s grantees are “small, community-led newsrooms,” Marill said. His work is keeping journalism alive through the work of people who don’t just believe in themselves, but who believe that the purpose of local media is to uplift perspectives from the communities it serves.  

The state of journalism today is not clear. The purpose of telling stories isn’t changing, but the way that we tell them is. Social media and AI are shaping the way we share and consume information, but within a changing world, four New Jerseyans are finding ways to keep journalism alive. When Rein opens a blank document to write a story, he remembers something that a mentor once told him: “This could be the greatest thing I’ve ever written in my life.”