Critical Role of Community Information

If you are reading this column today in a newspaper, you are very lucky, support that product as if your life depended on it, it very well may. However, for many communities, when you walk down main street today, something is missing that most people cannot quite name. It is not just the empty storefronts, though those are hard to miss. It is the absence of someone watching, someone telling the story of this place, someone making sure the community knows what is happening at city hall and which businesses just opened their doors. The local newspaper used to do that job. In most communities, it can no longer.

The numbers are staggering. Since 2005, the United States has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers. As of 2025, more than 212 counties have zero locally based news sources at all, and another 1,525 are down to a single outlet barely holding on. Roughly 50 million Americans now live in what researchers call news deserts, communities where nobody is watching the school board, covering the city council, or telling the story of Main Street. Newspapers are closing at a rate of more than two per week, and there is no serious cavalry coming to save them. The economics are broken in ways that good intentions alone will not fix.

So I want to ask a different question this week. Instead of asking who will save the local newspaper, what if we asked who is already trusted in the community, already connected to local business, already has a reason to show up, and might just be willing to reinvent themselves for this moment? In most communities, that answer is the local chamber of commerce.

Here is what the data tells us. A 2024 national poll by The Harris Poll, conducted on behalf of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, found that 81 percent of American adults view their local chamber as a trusted resource and partner. Nine in ten believe the chamber has an impact on growing the local economy. Those are numbers most newspapers would have envied even in their prime. The chamber already has the credibility. What it has largely lacked is the vision to use it as a community information platform rather than just a business directory.

Think about what a reimagined chamber could do. It already knows every locally owned business in town. It already has the relationships with city government, the school district, and the economic development office. It already hosts events that bring people together. What it has rarely done is plant a flag and say: we are the place where this community comes to find out what is happening, where local businesses get their stories told, and where residents learn why spending their dollars close to home matters. That is a news desert solution hiding in plain sight.

The chamber would not need to become a newspaper. It would need to become something more like the town square that newspapers once represented, a trusted place where information flows, where local voices are heard, and where the community's economic story gets told with honesty and pride. A weekly email digest. A community events calendar that everyone actually uses. A regular spotlight on locally owned businesses and the people behind them. Social media content that explains what happens to dollars spent at the hardware store down the street versus the national chain fifteen miles away. None of that requires a printing press. It requires commitment and a willingness to show up.

The hyper-local spending case writes itself. Studies show that roughly 68 cents of every dollar spent at a locally owned business stays and circulates in that community. Spend the same dollar at a national chain and most of it is gone by nightfall, routed to a distant corporate headquarters. A chamber that actively tells that story, week after week, in plain language that regular people understand, is doing economic development work that no ribbon cutting ever accomplished.

Not every chamber has the staff or budget to pull this off alone. That is where partnerships matter. Local government, the library, the school district, community foundations, and yes, even the surviving local paper where one exists, can all contribute to a shared information commons anchored by the chamber. The point is that someone has to own it. Someone trusted, rooted, and already present in the community has to decide that keeping people informed is part of their mission. The chamber is the most natural candidate in most towns.

This week, I want to ask you to do something concrete. If you run a local business, reach out to your chamber and ask what you can do together to fill the information gap in your community. If you are a chamber leader reading this, visit acce.org and explore what chambers across the country are already doing to broaden their community role. The town square did not disappear. It just needs new management.

John Newby, Pineville, MO., is a nationally recognized publisher, community, business and media consultant, & speaker. His column appears in communities nationwide. He is currently the CEO of the McDonald County Chamber and the founder of Truly-Local, dedicated to helping communities create excitement, energy, and capture the synergies needed to thrive in an ever increasingly complicated environment. He can be reached at [email protected].