Our feeds are flooded with trendy news. Kansas City needs local journalism | Opinion

Most people in Kansas City can feel that something has shifted in local news.

There is no shortage of information, but it has become harder to find consistent, reliable coverage of what matters most locally. Part of the challenge is that what people want and what people need do not always match. Popular content and essential civic information are not always the same thing, and a healthy local news system needs both.

The gap between what today’s local news business models can support and the kind of information people need to engage civically, and for local government to function well, continues to widen. That gap is most visible where long-term accountability matters most, including city halls and other government buildings, school boards, courtrooms and commission meetings.

Important decisions are still being made in those spaces, but fewer people are consistently there to explain what happened and why it matters. A local information system stretched thin and understaffed struggles to stay with messier, more complex issues over time, and that absence can be mistaken for disinterest or a lack of community engagement, even as the region faces increasingly consequential decisions.

A recent guest essay in The New York Times by Sarabeth Berman — “Local newspapers are closing. Local news is surviving” — highlighted what many communities are experiencing. Even as media business models change, the need for local information does not disappear, and while coverage reorganizes and new approaches emerge, the underlying civic demand remains.

Kansas City is living that transition right now.

Reporting, distribution models changed

For a long time, local journalism depended on a model in which advertising subsidized reporting, distribution was predictable and a small number of institutions carried most of the responsibility for keeping the public informed. That system produced real accountability, but it relied on conditions that no longer exist.

How people get information has also changed. There is more competition for attention, less time to engage deeply and far more content competing to be seen. In that environment, the kind of news that travels best is the news that can grab attention quickly and be easily remembered and passed along. That dynamic is not inherently bad, but it creates a real challenge for local civic coverage, because the issues that matter most in local government are rarely simple or fast. When attention is scarce, those messier stories struggle to stay visible, even when many people care deeply about the outcome.

Local news works differently from national news. It is less ideological and more practical, focused on helping people understand how decisions get made, how money moves and how power is exercised. It creates a shared set of facts that people with very different views can rely on. As a result, local reporting on issues that affect people’s daily lives remains one of the least polarizing forms of journalism.

Kansas City is weighing a set of high-stakes decisions that will shape the region for decades, including where and how it invests in housing, transportation and public safety; how it deals with stadiums, jails and data centers; and how we prepare for moments such as the 2026 World Cup and what remains after the spotlight moves on. None of that works well without public understanding and public trust.

One of the biggest challenges in this moment is fragmentation — not just geographically or politically, but informationally. Conversations happen in parallel. Attention is scattered and decisions are made without a shared understanding of how issues connect or how the region arrived at the choices now on the table.

Despite those challenges, there are bright spots emerging locally. More collaboration and partnership is happening behind the scenes, as newsrooms experiment with working together to cover more ground with limited resources. When reporting capacity is spread thin, coordination matters. Dividing the work, sharing information and building on one another’s strengths represents a shift from how local journalism has traditionally operated, but it is a shift that ultimately benefits Kansas Citians.

We have seen the cost of breakdowns in coordination in other parts of civic life. When cooperation falters, progress slows, trust erodes and the entire region pays the price. That reality raises a simple question: If coordination is hard in economics and politics, can Kansas City do better when it comes to information?

Cooperation for civic infrastructure

Can the region imagine a journalism community that is not about territory or credit, but about focus, with a shared commitment to sustained coverage of public institutions, less duplication, more coordination and a clearer path for people trying to understand what is happening in their own community?

I lead The Beacon, a Kansas City-based nonprofit, public service newsroom serving Kansas and Missouri. We’re part of the broader, national effort to build the next versions of local information in a way that works for all people. We do this work alongside other newsrooms, not instead of them, because no single outlet can meet this moment alone.

That work includes accountability reporting, clear explainers and voter guides people can actually use, as well as experimenting with new ways to support sustained coverage. Through our Documenters program, we train and pay local residents to attend public meetings, including school boards and city commissions, and to help build a people-powered public record of how local decisions are made. This public service journalism is designed to strengthen transparency and access, and it is made freely available for other news organizations to use and republish.

From my seat, what is genuinely encouraging is that more city leaders and civic leaders outside journalism are starting to engage, not out of nostalgia or goodwill, but because they are seeing the consequences of the erosion of local journalism firsthand. When public understanding breaks down, their work gets harder. And when trust erodes, progress slows.

Local journalism is not a luxury. It’s civic infrastructure, and like any infrastructure that supports a functioning community, it is something worth protecting.

Stephanie Campbell is CEO of The Beacon, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news organization covering Missouri and Kansas.