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Between shifting revenue sources and waning audience attention, the local news sector is under fire.

To help local news outlets thrive, a recent report by FT Strategies, The Local News Playbook, developed in partnership with the Knight Foundation in the US, outlined best practices from news outlets across the pond.

Sustainable local news organisations thrive when they reflect, represent, and serve their communities with news they can use.

This approach, however, often runs counter to traditional newsroom metrics and operational models. As Anjali Shah of Charlottesville Tomorrow explained in a webinar by FT Strategies, many modern newsrooms focus on efficiency and scale, seeking to use AI to reduce headcount, but community members value connection, local hiring, and visible investment in their lives.

“Our main metric of success for our organisation – and this goes from our board through to every person on our team, through to our partnerships, through to our community – is: does the communities that we serve have more power in their civic lives because they engage with us?”

A practical example is Charlottesville Tomorrow’s housing resource guide, which was created in response to direct community need. The guide aggregates hard-to-navigate public resources for people in a housing........

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