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Provocations from the 2026 Local News Summit: Can local news meet the moment? A resounding ‘maybe.’

This year’s conference questioned how effectively local news leaders are responding to fundamental changes in AI technology, shifting news habits, and societal upheaval

By Jim Friedlich and Vivian Schiller

February 4, 2026

This essay is part of a series on the 2026 Lenfest Institute-Aspen Digital Local News Summit, an annual convening of the country’s leading journalists, publishers, funders, news creators, and other industry professionals.

The national and international news media have descended on Minneapolis over the past few weeks.

But for local news outlets, like Minneapolis-based Sahan Journal, the work of reporting on Minnesota communities began long before “Operation Metro Surge” and will continue long after national attention shifts elsewhere. Since its founding in 2019, Sahan Journal has covered immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota, and it continues to do so now — often at great risk to its own reporters. 

Speaking at the Local News Summit in San Antonio last week, Sahan Journal Executive Director Vanan Murugesan conveyed the dual reality his team’s journalists face: They themselves are immigrants conducting frontline reporting on ICE raids — a unique combination that carries added legal and safety risks that most other reporters don’t face.

Vanan reported that some on the team go to work each day in the streets of Minneapolis with two telephone numbers written in permanent marker on their arms: the contact number for a First Amendment attorney and that of an immigration lawyer. 

Beyond Minnesota, growing threats to First Amendment protections —  along with powerful business and technological changes roiling the industry — represent both opportunity and existential risk to the field of local news. 

While every local market is different, Summit attendees were in deep agreement: 

Our work must evolve to meet the changing nature of how individuals access information, the growing role of the public in documenting events with their iPhones, and the growing influence of AI.

The definition of journalist is also shifting. Independent news creators have assumed an important and growing role in disseminating information, including in moments of crisis. Many have large followings and are often seen as trusted messengers, more authentic and authoritative than historical news media brands. To ignore these audience trends or the growing market of news creators who are serving them would be a grave mistake for our business and our journalism. 

AI is revolutionizing how people access and personalize information, including journalism, but it also introduces the threats of misinformation and fake content. The local news industry’s response to powerful new AI technology has so far suffered from under-investment and a focus on incremental rather than more fundamental product development. 

What can local news enterprises do not only to keep up with these tectonic changes but also to help lead their evolution? 

The Local News Summit covered these pressing risks and opportunities. News leaders shared provocations to help the group imagine a path forward and create space for conversation.

The provocations are: 

• Judging our journalism not by what we record, but by what we do: Amanda Zamora, founder of Agencia Media and a co-founder and former publisher of The 19th, envisioned journalism as a form of mutual aid that can help communities navigate chaos in real-time rather than merely document history. “When journalism positions itself primarily as an observer — arriving after the fact, speaking mostly to officials, publishing behind paywalls, draining urgency, or hedging reality in its language — it leaves a vacuum,” she said. “A vacuum that is too often filled with rumors and partial truths — not because people don’t value journalism, but because journalism is not meeting people where they are.”

• Local news is missing the boat on AI: Vilas Dhar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, called on news organizations to move past their “self-imposed stasis” in investing in and more fully leveraging AI, which has the power to fundamentally restructure our work and impact. “Instead of asking ‘Which new AI tool should we try?’, newsroom leaders should ask ‘What systemic change would make us more effective storytellers?’’’ he said. 

• How we can serve voracious young news consumers: Jeremy Gilbert, the Knight Professor in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern’s Medill School, shared the latest Next Gen News study, which shows that young people regularly, often voraciously, consume news and information, just not in the way we might assume. “Audience members, especially younger ones, trust each other to help make sense of events, and professional journalists are a part of their verification process, but are not automatic arbiters of truth,” he said. 

• The public’s vital role in recording events: Joel Simon, director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, noted a historic inversion. Where the press has long held itself out as the eyes and ears of the public, which has served as the basis for its First Amendment constitutional protection, now members of the public, particularly those creating open-source video, have become the eyes and ears of the press, enabling the brilliant work done recently by The Minnesota Star Tribune, Bellingcat, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others. Simon observed that the press now needs to stand up for the public’s free speech rights.

This is a singular moment in American history, and local journalists are uniquely positioned to help their communities navigate these challenging times. 

As Zamora shared in her provocation: “History will not judge us by the volume of stories we document. It will judge us by whether people were able to access and act on information to stay safe, to make decisions, to protect their families, and to survive this period of extraordinary instability.”

The Local News Summit is funded by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, with additional support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and the Google News Initiative.