From a story on niemanlab.org by Lara Salahi and Christina Smith headlined “How college students can help save local news”:

Local news outlets across the U.S. are struggling to bring in advertising and subscription revenue, which pays for the reporting, editing and production of their articles. It’s not a new problem, but with fewer and fewer journalism jobs as a result, a growing number of local newsrooms have found a potential solution: college journalism students.

From a story on newyorker.com by Clare Malone headlined “Is There a Market for Saving Local News?”:

“The Cleveland Press, dead at 103.” That was WEWS Cleveland’s proclamation on June 17, 1982, the day the paper—which the former mayor Carl Stokes once wrote had determined every mayor from 1941 to 1965—made its last print run. A decades-long slide in the power of the area’s local media followed. These days, the Cleveland press writ large is, if not dead, then seriously ill….

Cleveland is like many areas of the country in that respect: as the local-news business becomes less sustainable, residents find themselves more reliant on national media sources, if they are receiving quality news at all.