In a recent interview with The New York Times, the intrepid Scott Pelley offered a brilliant pearl of wisdom that deserves to be etched into the civic architecture of this country: “There is no democracy without journalism.”

The statement is simple, but it is far from small. Democracy does not live and breathe by elections alone. It does so by the circulation of facts, by the “marketplace of ideas,” and by the ability of ordinary people to know what is being done in their name and with their money.

Without journalism, power becomes harder to see, harder to question, and harder to hold accountable. Without journalism, citizens are reduced to idle spectators, left to navigate public life through rumor, propaganda, algorithmic echo chambers, or whatever information they can afford to purchase.

That is why local journalism is a public good. In a free society, the liberty of thought and discussion belongs to us all — free of charge.

Connecticut is a small state. The choices that shape our daily lives, however, are anything but simple. State and local politics affect our schools, budgets, elders, business owners, working families, housing, health care, energy, and much more. The decisions made in Hartford, city halls, and town council chambers ripple outward into the lives of diverse communities across the state.

Yet state and local government are often the levels of politics people know the least about. The vicissitudes of national politics dominate our screens. Indeed, we work and work all day just to come home and sit in front of the telescreen for our daily dose of division. Meanwhile, local newspapers have thinned, public attention has fragmented, and many of the policy decisions that most directly shape everyday life in our hometowns are made through games of “ inside baseball.”

The decay of civil discourse is measurable. Medill’s 2025 State of Local News report found 213 news desert counties in the United States. A credible local news source no longer covers these communities. In an additional 1,524 counties, “there’s only one remaining news source.” As a result, about 50 million Americans “have limited to no access to local news.” Last year, there were 136 newspaper closures, “a rate of more than two per week.” 

When local journalism disappears, the damage reaches far beyond the newsroom, corroding the deliberative foundations of democracy. And yet the story is not only elegiac. 

The same report found that over 300 local news startups have emerged since 2020, most of them digital. Across the country, non-profit news organizations are filling the void with a clear sense of urgency and purpose. They are not replacing everything we have lost. But they are helping to prevent civic cecity. They are proving that watchdog reporting, explanatory journalism, and local accountability need not vanish simply because an old business model is failing.

That is why Connecticut should be grateful to the journalists and institutions still doing the precious work of public interest reporting. The New Haven Independent, founded by Paul Bass in 2005, helped pioneer a non-profit model of digital civic journalism in this state. Since 2010, The Connecticut Mirror has built its own statewide non-partisan and non-profit newsroom devoted to making public policy, government, and politics legible and accessible to all. Alongside other local outlets across the country, such as the Boston-based CommonWealth Beacon, these organizations help close the gap between decision and demos — i.e., between the institutions that govern and us, the people, who must live under their choices.

Recent research on local journalism further underscores its importance. The Pew Research Center’s 2026 Local News Fact Sheet reports that attention to local news has steadily declined over the past decade. In February 2016, 37% of U.S. adults said they followed local news “very closely.” By December 2025, that proportion had fallen to 21%. But the survey also found that 80% of respondents considered “local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community.” Moreover, of those who consumed local news in 2025, 88% did not pay for it.

This combination of findings tells us something important. The issue may not be public indifference so much as public access. People cannot pay attention to news they cannot see. In any case, we certainly have not lost the intuition that local journalism matters. We understand that a community without a press is a community with fewer eyes on power.

Additional research points in the same direction. Democracy Fund has summarized studies linking stronger local journalism to greater civic participation, while research from the University of Notre Dame has linked local newspaper closures to “poorly run government and higher costs.” Put differently, when local journalism disappears, the public does not simply lose stories. It loses scrutiny. It loses memory. It loses the mechanism by which ordinary people can see the machinery of government before that machinery steamrolls over them.

Equally important is the principle of access. Pelley also remarked, “You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment.” Quite right. And free speech should be free. In a democracy, reliable information should not become a luxury good available chiefly to those who can afford one more monthly subscription.

Of course, journalism costs money. Reporters deserve to be paid. Editors need resources. Serious public interest reporting requires time, skill, and independence. But the answer cannot be a civic order in which informed decision-making and self-government are reserved for those with the disposable income to clear every paywall. A paywall may be a business model, but it is also exactly what the term implies: a wall, a boundary, an obstacle between citizens and the information they need to both consent to government and govern themselves.

This is one reason why non-profit, open-access, and anti-tabloid journalism matters so much in our current media ecosystem. CT Mirror’s own stated mission emphasizes informing Connecticut residents about public policy, holding government accountable, and amplifying diverse voices. Its republication policy requires republished CT Mirror content to remain free and not be placed behind a paywall: “Access to CT Mirror content that you republish must remain free.”

This principle is undoubtedly larger than any single publication. It recognizes something essential: public knowledge is a public good. The civic infrastructure of the Fourth Estate is no less necessary than libraries, schools, or town halls.

Furthermore, public interest journalism does more than investigate and explain. At its best, it also creates a space where citizens can respond. A healthy democracy requires not only professional reporting, but also public forums in which ordinary people can enter the conversation with their own valuable experiences, warnings, visions, and demands. Not everyone has a lobbyist. Not everyone has institutional power. But everyone, in principle, has a voice. Use it!

We live in a moment when journalism is distrusted, attacked, hollowed out, and too often replaced by entertainers and influencers masquerading as truth-tellers. Nor has corporate legacy media, on either side of the political spectrum, always helped its own case; too often it has confused public service with spectacle, outrage, and market share. In such a moment, local non-profit news institutions matter all the more. They are among democracy’s vanguards of verification, explanation, and accountability.

Pelley was right. There is no democracy without journalism. “It can’t be done.” Here in Connecticut, the institutions that still take that truth seriously — institutions like the one on your screen right now — deserve readers, defenders, and public support strong enough to keep the democratic light from dimming.

Robert T.F. Downes is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, specializing in political theory and public law. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Rhode Island College, where he teaches American Government. The views expressed here are his alone.