NPR.

It seems impossible to imagine now, but not long ago, journalism was actually a good business.

For decades, hundreds of millions of Americans relied on newspapers, TV, and radio to find out

what was going on in the world and in their communities.

The money for journalism came from two main sources, news consumers and advertisers.

And news outlets had an endless supply of both.

When the internet came along, things changed.

Media industry analyst Ken Docter had a front row seat to it. You can see that newspapers were in

decline because of the inroads of Google, Yahoo. They were taking advertising revenue.

They were also taking something that's even,

in a sense, more precious, which is attention. Consumers' attention turned to social media and

streaming. Advertisers followed, and the business model that supported news for centuries began

to crumble. In the past couple decades, more than 3,000 local newspapers have closed,

and thousands of journalists have been laid off. For millions of Americans, the vacuum left behind

has often been filled by misinformation, paid influencers, and AI slop.

One could look at all this and reasonably conclude that fact-based, independent, local journalism is

cooked. But Ken is not giving up just yet. I do believe if you build it right, they will come.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show

we'll look at two startups bucking the trend.

Their success so far might just reveal a path forward for a local news revival.

Santa Cruz County in California has a population of around 260,000 residents. For a long time,

the paper of record there was the Santa Cruz Sentinel. But when Ken Doctor moved there in 2019,

...