Harrisburg-area public news media grows stronger

Good news! At a time when local news is being bought and gutted by conglomerates, the Steinman family, which has helmed the LancasterOnline/LNP for 158 years, is turning its entire operation over to a local public media organizations, Harrisburg-based PBS station WITF, creating a single sustainable organization that will help fill the growing news gap in the region. WITF and the Steinman Foundation will also create The Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement, which will support local journalism, foster community focused education initiatives and help boost local news coverage.

LNP, which also includes the Lititz Record-Express, The Ephrata Review and The Caucus, will be redesignated as a Pennsylvania Benefit Corporation with a mandate to create public benefits. The Steinman Foundation will provide five years of funding to help the new multimedia news organization achieve sustainability.

This is wonderful news for those who see local news as crucial for small d democracy. We discussed the importance of local news in Episode 102 of News over Noise with Tim Lambert of WITF so it really resonates with us. After all, reading news contextualized in relation to things and people that readers know from their local community is why local news so important for citizens engaging in civic life.

In relation to this story, PSU’s News Literacy Initiative is helping to fund a project by Penn State Harrisburg faculty Nakho Kim to create a local news agenda dashboard. This digital resource will help people visually compare news on different topics in the local news media and will be available on the News Literacy Initiative Website soon. Stay tuned for more.