'60 Minutes' to examine crisis in local news, Report for America’s efforts to bolster journalism Feb. 27
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The Feb. 27 edition of CBS's “60 Minutes” will examine the crisis in local news and how hedge funds and other financial firms have swallowed up newspapers, closed newsrooms and slashed staff.
The episode will feature Report for America as one answer to the crisis and the threat it poses to democracy. Report for America is a national service program that places emerging journalists into local newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered issues and communities. By bolstering local journalism, Report for America is seeking to shore up local journalism as a cornerstone of democracy.
The Henrico Citizen is one of only two Virginia news organizations that hosts a Report for America corps member; the Citizen's Anna Bryson covers education. Report for America currently fields about 300 journalists in more than 200 newsrooms.
The segment includes interviews with Steven Waldman, Report for America’s co-founder and president, and five of the nonprofit program’s current and former reporting corps members.
According to studies, the number of reporters in the country has declined 60 percent since 2000, a job decline similar in scale to the coal industry. Some 1,800 communities now have no local news outlet, and the vacuum in many cases is being filled by misinformation – largely shared by social media – that leads to polarization.
Report for America is working to reverse this decline, to rebuild trust in the media and to strengthen democracy. An initiative of The GroundTruth Project, it was co-founded in 2017 by Waldman and veteran journalist Charles Sennott, GroundTruth’s founder and chief executive officer.
“60 Minutes” airs Sunday 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and Paramount+. To learn more about Report for America, click here. To make a tax-deductible contribution through RFA to support the Citizen's education coverage, click here.
