These 5 Georgia local news outlets will need your help after the national media’s post-election exodus
All eyes are now on the state, but after today they’ll turn away and these publications will continue the work of informing and uniting their communities.
Google “Georgia Runoff” right now and there will be more than 82 million results, and the “Top Stories” will be from national names like The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. In fact, you won’t see a local link on the first page until you get to the bottom: the state government’s explainer and voting tool.
But after today, reporters from those outlets will head home. Those local reporters who were there before Georgia’s runoff elections for two Senate seats became the ultimate battlefront in the nation’s ideological and electoral struggle… those local reporters will still be there cranking away, having benefited little from the national attention. In fact, they’ll likely be suffering from an outbreak of cynicism and disdain for the press among a population unwillingly thrust into the center ring of the worst circus in the nation.
While national news outlets gobbled up traffic and cleaved audiences by localizing divisive national partisanship, these local outlets will have the job of powering on, uniting their communities as they dependably have for years. They’re community publishers, focusing on the meat-and-potatoes of local governance and neighborliness. And they do it amidst a pandemic and shriveling ad dollars, with few tools to leverage audience support.
Two of the publishers below are in Cobb County, one of the areas President Trump has singled out in his disinformation campaign to undermine faith in the elections. These areas in particular need your help to create ongoing, credible community coverage to restore the damage to civic society.
So, if you could, take a minute from refreshing the runoff coverage on the homepage of your favorite national news website today, and throw each of these folks $5, would you?
- East Cobb News — Born and raised in East Cobb, editor Wendy Parker has spent her entire career dedicated to ferreting out the community’s stories for outlets including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and NPR affiliate WABE. In launching East Cobb News, she put building trust and credibility through aggressive coverage as central to her mission. She doesn’t have an option to accept direct reader support on her website, but she told me she accepts PayPal transfers to wendy [at] eastcobbnews.com.
- Cobb County Courier — Since 2015, Larry Felton John’s Cobb County Courier provides a central hub to find out all the happenings of civic interest across the county’s seven localities. Help him keep going by clicking the “Support the Cobb County Courier” prompt in the sidebar or halfway down the homepage. Note that if you’re on a mobile device, you may need to swipe to the bottom and click “View Non-AMP Version” to see the prompt.
- Project Q Atlanta — Editor Matt Hennie is one of my favorite local publishers, and through Project Q he and his team bring news, commentary and “juicy dish” for Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ community. To donate, go to the website, provide your e-mail address using the popup (you don’t need to subscribe to the newsletters), verify your e-mail account and then click here or the bubble in the lower right hand side and select Make a Donation from the menu.
- Decaturish — Covering DeKalb County on the east side of the Atlanta metro area, editor Dan Whisenhunt has been serving up high-utility daily news and information for residents since 2013. Donate here.
- (Added post-publication): The Savannahian — This homegrown arts, culture and activism alt-weekly was recommended by a Twitter user. I love discovering local news orgs! It looks like they only have a monthly option for reader support, but consider e-mailing the editors and see if there’s another way you can help.
If you know of another community publisher in Georgia, let me know and I’ll add it to the list. Thanks!
Ned Berke is the VP of Audience Strategy at BlueLena, an end-to-end audience management solution that provides local, regional, niche and investigative news organizations with hands-on assistance to strengthen relationships with audiences and make more money to support quality journalism.
He provides free audience development training for newsrooms through the Center for Cooperative Media, and he built the Audience Explorer dashboard, a free tool now in use in hundreds of newsrooms. Berke is a founding member of LION Publishers.
