The New York Times: It’s your one-stop shop for cooking, games, sports…and next, perhaps, local news?
On Wednesday, the Times announced it will soon launch The Local, “a new journalism initiative aimed at serving and engaging communities.” The national news behemoth will kick off the new initiative in August with a pilot newsletter for the Twin Cities, which will be sent out three times a week, “with the goal of deepening our relationships with readers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and helping them feel more connected through journalism,” managing editor Marc Lacey and editorial director of newsletters Judi Rudoren wrote in the announcement. “Our hope,” they added, “is that The Local: Twin Cities can serve as a model for similar future efforts elsewhere around the country.”
“We want to reach people who’ve never engaged with the Times, deepen our connection with occasional visitors, and serve our most loyal subscribers,” Rudoren told me in an email. “We don’t think what those people want from a local newsletter is all that different: original reporting and analysis, smart curation, reader-focused conversation, clarity, surprise, and delight.” She emphasized that the newsletter is free to access and will not be limited to Times subscribers.
Per the announcement, “the voicey newsletter will combine from-the-ground reporting and service with insightful curation of all the Times offers through a local lens.” The sign-up landing page notes the newsletter will feature “the latest news, culture, and sports from the Twin Cities.”
This isn’t the Times’ first foray into local journalism; most notably, since 2023, its local investigations fellowship has put its formidable resources at the disposal of local reporters and newsrooms across the country in partnerships that have produced Pulitzer-winning local journalism. But the service journalism emphasis of The Local is an entirely different proposition that suggests The Times wants to step up its efforts to fill the local news void, and/or sees commercial opportunity to build an Axios-style local newsletter network. (On Wednesday, Axios Local announced its expansion to its 40th and 41st markets, Cincinnati and the area north of Cincinnati.)
Earlier this year, an in-house ad voiced by A.G. Sulzberger himself caught our attention here at Nieman Lab because, rather than ask readers to support The New York Times, he called on listeners to support any news organization “dedicated to original reporting,” and noted, “local newspapers in particular need your support.” My colleague Josh Benton has argued the Times has a responsibility to do more to support local news. “If the Times is going to be truly mission-driven — if it believes in its ‘core journalistic mission of helping people understand the world’ — it should be using its position of relative financial security to work harder on the biggest and most intractable part of the problem,” he wrote in 2024.
The Twin Cities are no news desert, as the Times acknowledges. “We chose the Twin Cities because it’s a region with a vibrant media ecosystem, hunger for news and tons of creativity,” Lacey and Rudoren wrote. “We’re excited to offer a unique and high-quality newsletter to complement what’s already there.” They specify that one of The Local’s goals is to “support local news outlets, viewing them not as competitors but as partners.” Per the announcement, the Times’ newsletter will promote other news outlets’ stories and journalists and “look for innovative ways to collaborate.” As examples of the kind of collaboration it anticipates, The Times notes it will record a special episode of the Wirecutter Podcast at the Minnesota Public Radio booth at the state fair next month, and will sponsor The Minnesota Star Tribune’s North Star Summit in September. (Just last month, the Star Tribune announced layoffs and said it was exploring becoming a nonprofit.)
The Twin Cities newsletter will be co-hosted by Minnesotans: Shadi Bushra, formerly of MinnPost, and Jay Gabler, who joins the project from the Duluth News Tribune. Times Newsletters deputy Hanna Ingber is leading The Local, and St. Paul native Talya Minsberg will be the team’s senior staff editor, “serving as a crucial link between The Times and [the] journalists in the field, helping make the breadth of our coverage feel urgent and relevant and using video, social media, comments, graphics, data and other storytelling tools to build community.”
Read more about The Local and the pilot newsletter in the Times’ announcement here.
