NYPR and Gothamist Are on a Mission to Save Local News

If you’ve ever used the restroom at New York’s City Hall, you’ve probably washed your hands using a soap dispenser that looked like any other. What you might not have known is that that dispenser was manufactured by incarcerated New Yorkers making an average of 65 cents an hour—and sometimes as little as sixteen.

Like a lot of New Yorkers, I learned this from an in-depth article published by Gothamist, a bastion of local, digital reporting about the city that 8.5 million of us call home.

Gothamist was where we read about the doubling of anti-Semitic incidents in the city last year, and where we lived a day in the life of a charming New York harbor pilot, in one of the busiest and most treacherous ports in the world. And, of course, it was where we watched interviews with subway manspreaders, and argued about the best places to find that most New York of New York staples: the bacon, egg, and cheese.

When Gothamist was abruptly shut down last November, you could almost hear the city cry out. We had lost something not just important, but increasingly rare—something we can’t get from big, international publications, or from our Facebook feeds: good, in-depth, fact-checked reporting about our city, and the issues facing it.

Gothamist curated the best, most relevant news, from all over the city and beyond. In the words of Jen Chung, the site’s co-founder and editor, it was like that friend who can speak authoritatively about a bill going through the legislature, knows the best museum exhibit to visit this weekend, and cares deeply about your next perfect slice of pizza.

At New York Public Radio, we believe local journalism is as vital to civic life as the voting booth, the public park, or the community board. So it was with profound joy and excitement that we announced, last week, that we would be partnering with our public radio colleagues at KPCC in LA, and WAMU in DC, to acquire and relaunch Gothamist and its sister sites LAist and DCist.

We did this not only because we wanted to bring back a beloved and integral piece of the local-news landscape, but also because we believe WNYC and Gothamist can benefit greatly from each other—and become more than the sum of their parts.

Both organizations believe deeply in the power of storytelling to reveal the human side of the headlines and to shine a light on issues playing out in our backyard. (In fact, if you’re interested in the experiences of incarcerated New Yorkers, you should check out WNYC’s fantastic new podcast, Caught, hosted by Kai Wright. It’s about juvenile justice in America, and brings us firsthand stories about what it’s like to be caught in the system.)

Now that Gothamist has joined the NYPR family, we can tell more of these stories that need to be told. With our combined audiences, and expertise in audio and digital platforms, we’ll be able to reach new people, in new ways. We’ll foster important conversations—whether they’re about breakfast sandwiches or the purging of Brooklyn voter rolls. We’ll collaborate, innovate, and share expertise. And in the process, we’ll provide a viable business model for other newsrooms across the country, at a time when it’s clear the traditional model is no longer working.

Even in a city as big and robust as New York, we’ve seen the advertiser-funded model fail, as digital ad revenue that once went to journalists goes increasingly to companies like Facebook and Google.

As the Revson Foundation and others have noted recently, the losses in New York have been steep. The Wall Street Journal has slashed its metro section. The New York Times has more than halved its local staff. The Daily News has closed its news desks for every borough except Manhattan.

This is to say nothing of the suburbs—or New Jersey, where hundreds of local reporters have been laid off in just the past couple years.

At the same time local journalism reaches a crisis point, we are more and more desperate for the service it provides.

Local reporters are the ones who attend late-night community meetings, who schlep over to the statehouse, the courthouse, and the police precinct. They’re the ones who slog through meeting minutes and obscure reports. They’re the ones who report on the bathroom soap dispensers in City Hall—because they’re the ones at City Hall, day after day, holding our leaders accountable.

In an era of record polarization and isolation—fueled by those same click-bait headlines that have taken over our social feeds—we need good, local reporting more than ever. It ties us to our communities and provides much-needed space for dialogue with our neighbors.

Studies by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation have shown strong links between consumption of local news and civic engagement: those who are more likely to read about local news are also more likely to vote in local elections.

So preserving local news platforms is important for our democracy—and I believe public media organizations are best equipped to do it. At NYPR, we don’t rely on advertisers alone. We’re supported by a diverse mix of funding streams—membership, sponsorship, and philanthropy—which allows us to be resilient in the face of a rapidly changing media landscape.

In fact, funding for our acquisition of Gothamist was provided by several generous people and institutions, including our station partners, supporter Josh Reznick, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. Meanwhile, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, along with New York Public Radio Trustee Cynthia King Vance, has provided critical funding for the digital transformation of the WNYC newsroom, of which Gothamist will be an integral part. And in the week since we announced the acquisition, we’ve heard from dozens of listeners and donors who offered additional support.

The transition will take time and hard work—but I’m so excited for what the future holds. This partnership will allow us to fulfill our promise to the people of New York.

As we assemble a transition team for the first six months, we’ll include staffers from Gothamist and WNYC, who will work together to create a sustainable plan for the integration of our newsrooms. Their top priority will be to make sure this plan contributes to our broader organizational mission and goals, both internal and external: to create content that informs and inspires, to shine a light on the broad and diverse issues affecting our neighborhoods, to attract and support the best and brightest journalists in the world, and to serve as a beacon for media organizations everywhere.

This spring, we’ll be relaunching the new site at Gothamist.com (and in the meantime, we’ll be sharing updates by email).

As we’ve learned over the course of our nearly 100-year history, surviving doesn’t mean stubbornly pushing forward. It means evolving and innovating. The old model won’t work here—and we’re not expecting it to.

That’s why, with our supporters, our listeners, and our partners at Gothamist, we’re ushering in the new.