Our commentary is from former New York Times columnist Charles Blow, on a disappearing staple of communities everywhere:

Local news is in crisis . By some estimates, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished since 2005 .

According to the nonprofit Rebuild Local News, the number of newsroom employees has declined 60 percent since 2000 – a collapse comparable in scale to the coal industry. And on average, two newspapers close each week.

Public radio and public television are also part of the ecosystem of local news, and they, too, are now under threat after the government clawed back $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

To better understand this problem, I partnered with the MacArthur Foundation and Press Forward , a national coalition

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