As local newspapers continue to shut down or shrink across the country, entire communities are being left in the dark. These “news deserts,” areas with little or no access to reliable local journalism, are growing. On campuses nationwide, student journalists are stepping in to fill the gap.
At student-run outlets, reporters are covering city council meetings, school boards, environmental issues, and more, often doing the work once handled by small-town newspapers. Their stories not only inform communities but also prove that college media can serve a mission far beyond campus.
According to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, 206 counties in the U.S. have no local news source at all, and 1,561 have only one.
With the recent defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the broader decline in public media, the role of student media has become even more essential.
One model that’s gained traction is the University of Vermont’s Community News Service, a program in which UV journalism students report on Vermont communities lacking consistent coverage. It’s part of a larger effort by the Center for Community News to create and support partnerships between college programs and local or regional media.
“Student journalists are reimagining the way news is covered in their communities,” said Meg Little Reilly, managing director of the Center. “They bring a deep concern for some of the most urgent challenges of our time and a lens that is resonant with younger, more diverse audiences.”
Roxy Ekberg, the politics editor at The Daily Iowan, said that perspective comes from being young, eager, and hungry for experience.
She said student journalists’ willingness to learn and adapt gives them an advantage, especially in communities where traditional outlets may have lost touch.
“Younger reporters have a closer understanding of how journalism is evolving,” Ekberg said. “They know how to use social media and digital content to increase audience reach and expand coverage.”
This generational perspective means student journalists are often more fluent in the formats that reach today’s readers.
“Student journalists are also eager to apply journalistic traditions and rigor to new mediums, finding creative ways to translate print stories for social media, audio, and video,” Reilly said.
For example, Ekberg said The Daily Iowan has focused on meeting readers where they are through social media.
“Communities disengaged with traditional media still engage with the media, just through a different medium,” Ekberg said.
By embedding themselves both on campus and in the wider community, staff have built credibility and shown they care about the people they cover.
Many university programs partner directly with local outlets, assigning students to underreported beats. This expands coverage for newsrooms that are stretched thin and gives students valuable experience.
In most cases, students earn academic credit rather than a paycheck for their reporting, though some programs cover expenses such as gas or travel.
Reilly said the for-credit model is often the most equitable, since it allows students to take these classes in place of others and manage their schedules more easily.
“[News-academic partnerships] provide more reporting capacity for under-resourced local outlets, allowing for dedicated reporters to spend more time with communities that have historically been ignored outside of crime reporting,” Reilly said.
Unlike traditional internships, which can be financially out of reach for some students, these programs are built into the university curriculum. Students earn course credit, get professional editing support, and publish their work in community outlets.
“The result is professional-level reporting with no asterisk,” Reilly said.
In some cases, like the Oglethorpe Echo in Georgia and The Daily Iowan, college programs have even taken over as the primary newspaper of record in their regions.
The Daily Iowan now owns and produces content for two small-town newspapers, The Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and The Solon Economist.
“My roots are in small-town journalism, and I was very anticipatory of the ways our newsrooms could benefit from each other,” Ekberg said. “The partnership has been successful for everyone involved.”
At Franklin College in Indiana, where newspapers have decreased by 23% between 2004 and 2019, 28 students produced over 2,100 stories, videos, and graphics in 2024. More than 35 local outlets republished their work, and one story alone garnered more than 200,000 video views, according to CCN’s latest data.
This is part of a larger national trend. In 2024 alone, 124 news-academic partnerships across 39 states and Washington, D.C., involved 5,190 students. Together, they produced nearly 27,000 stories, more than 3,200 of which were published in professional news outlets.
That’s an 80% jump in student participation and a 148% increase in partnerships with local media compared to the previous year.
Ekberg said she believes more traditional outlets could learn from the adaptability of student journalists.
“Student journalists are eager, excited, and more importantly, willing to make a mistake and learn from it,” Ekberg said. “Student journalism allows for experimentation.”
She said the learning-lab model, where curiosity and flexibility are encouraged, could help traditional newsrooms better serve communities in flux.
“Both local news and higher education are facing extraordinary headwinds these days,” Reilly said. “But when they combine forces, they produce an unbeatable experience for students, a business solution for ailing outlets, and a regenerative democratic practice in the community.”
The challenges facing journalism today, from shrinking newsrooms to declining public trust, have created space for student journalists to rethink how local coverage is done.
“The only path to a sustainable future for trustworthy news reporting is by empowering this generation to reinvent how news is done,” Reilly said.
Whether you’re a faculty member looking to start a news-academic partnership, a student eager to report beyond campus, or a newsroom ready to collaborate, explore tools for building partnerships, launching programs, and engaging communities at uvm.edu/ccn.
For direct inquiries, contact Richard Watts, Executive Director of the Center For Community News, at [email protected].