A new 54-page study of local news in the Pennsylvania Wilds documents what people want from their newspapers. The problem is that it never requires them to confront what those things cost.

Sara Eddy Furlong

Residents want more coverage of school boards, borough councils, crime, healthcare, business, sports, elections, the environment and community events. They want more reporters and they want newspapers preserved. They also want paywalls removed and news provided for free.

That is not a roadmap for sustaining local journalism.

Press Forward’s “Local News in the Pennsylvania Wilds” acknowledges “a lack of willingness to pay for local news.” It nevertheless highlights comments demanding that someone else “fund news so it is free” and newspapers “remove the paywalls.”

Who, exactly, and with what money?

Journalists require salaries. Newspapers have printing, postage, technology, insurance and building costs. Public meetings occur at night, often simultaneously and miles apart. Covering them requires multiple trained people.

Yet the study places demands for more reporting beside demands for free access without asking respondents to reconcile the two.

It could have asked whether residents would subscribe to support additional coverage and how much they would pay. Would they donate to fund a reporting position? If a newsroom could hire one person, what should that reporter cover? If no one can be hired, what existing coverage should be eliminated to make room for something new?

Those questions are absent.

Further, the report spends considerably more time measuring demand for journalism than examining the labor required to produce it.

Thirteen publishers completed a survey about business operations. The study acknowledges recruitment problems, corporate control of staffing, meager freelance rates and the public’s unwillingness to pay. It does not document in meaningful detail how many reporters remain, how many communities each one covers, how often meetings conflict or how much editing, production and administrative work those reporters also perform.

Instead, it prominently displays this declaration: “We need more reporters so they can go to our school board meetings and borough council meetings.”

We know. Trust.

We know every time two meetings occur simultaneously. We know every time a story goes uncovered because one person cannot be in two places. We know every time work once divided among several employees lands on one desk.

Among the responses showcased in the report are student sports coverage, a high school municipal-reporting internship and grants for basic technology. Such projects may have educational or practical value, but they do not provide permanent newsroom staffing.

Interns require instruction, supervision and extensive editing by professionals whose time is already exhausted. A new laptop is useful, but it can’t attend a second meeting.

The report begins with an economic crisis but ends with proposed solutions that mostly ignore the economics. People want considerably more journalism, but resist the mechanisms that pay for it.

The only way to enjoy more local news is to support the people producing it. Subscribe. Pay for digital access instead of complaining about the paywall. Support the businesses that advertise in these pages, and let them know you saw their ads here.

Owners who want more coverage must hire more reporters. Community organizations that believe certain reporting should be available to everyone can pay newsrooms to produce it, without dictating what is said.

All of that requires money and labor. An intern, a technology grant or another listening session will not change the math. There is no such thing as free local news. No one — and I mean no one — can keep doing this work out of the goodness of their hearts. The choice is between local news that somebody pays for and, eventually, no local news at all.

Until people are willing to confront this, another catalog of everything they want from their newspaper accomplishes nothing. It is simply another demand placed on the few journalists who haven’t left yet.

(Sara Eddy Furlong is managing editor of The Bradford Era. Email her at s.furlong@bradfordera.com.)