In the 1800s, New Bedford, Massachusetts was the world's center of whaling.

More than half of the world's whaling ships in the 1840s came from New Bedford.

The town was so emblematic of whaling that it served as the setting for Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick.

According to the New York Times, it was then the richest city per capita on the continent.

Now more than a fifth of its citizens live in poverty.

But this exceptional historic town is representative of a phenomenon happening across the U.S.

Its local daily paper, the Standard Times, has been bought by a hedge fund-backed news conglomerate

and stripped to the bare bones. It's become what's known as a ghost paper because of the

trimmed down staff and the scant original reporting.

The mayor of New Bedford was quoted in the New York Times saying,

it used to be that I couldn't sneeze without having to explain myself.

Now I have to beg people to show up at my press conferences.

Please ask me questions.

A year and a half ago, a small group of concerned community members

gathered to try to address the dearth of local journalism. The result, a new nonprofit news

outlet called the New Bedford Light. Barbara Rosner is founding editor of the New Bedford Light. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Brooke. Happy to be here. Can you tell me a little about yourself before we get

into the light? Well, I am a legacy newspaper journalist of some 40 years. I've been a reporter,

a political columnist, an editor of major investigative projects

and long-form narratives. I ended up as managing editor of the Hartford Current, where I worked for

30 years. You were there in 1999 when it won a Pulitzer. I was. We won a Pulitzer for breaking news.

I spent a couple of years in what I call the private sector doing strategic communications,

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