Long Beach Post joins newsrooms across U.S. in founding new alliance
We at the Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal believe in the power of local news to make communities and people’s lives better. I am heartened to say that many others across the country believe that, too.
This week, our organization and five other major digital newsrooms announced a new alliance to help strengthen local journalism, and importantly, to share resources and ideas to ensure that we are sustainable well into the future.
In addition to the Post, the new Alliance for Sustainable Local News includes:
- Baltimore Banner, a rapidly growing startup with a broad product portfolio, focused on the greater Baltimore area.
- Block Club Chicago, founded four years ago to cover citywide and neighborhood-centric news in Chicago.
- Colorado Sun, a statewide public benefit corporation founded four years ago.
- Daily Memphian, a broad-based news organization founded four years ago, covering all of Memphis.
- Lookout Local/Lookout Santa Cruz, founded two years ago to provide coverage of Santa Cruz County.
The Long Beach Post was first founded in 2007, then sustained under local ownership and a group of tenacious employees for many years after the death of one of the Post’s co-founders in 2011, and ultimately underwent a significant transformation and dramatic expansion in 2018 thanks to local investment. (You can read all about our ownership and history here.) A few years later, in 2020, the company expanded to include the Business Journal.
Several longtime Post employees took a chance on this new local news adventure in 2018, to join new colleagues and wade into a then-uncertain future at the expanded Long Beach Post.
Several more employees of Southern California News Group (which includes the Press-Telegram) also took a risk and joined our staff after SCNG was purchased by the notorious hedgefund Alden Global Capital, which has decimated local news coverage across the country. In fact, five of the six news outlets in our new alliance are in Alden markets, and like us, are seeking to fill the void as journalists for these once-strong legacy papers have quit or been laid off.
Why is this important? Because without the check of strong, accurate journalism, civic institutions are weaker, and residents feel less connected to cities. Our mission—and that of our new partners—is to report the truth with authority, integrity and heart.
Though this new alliance will strengthen our mission, we also need your help. Journalism can’t survive without robust community support.
You can join in our mission in several ways:
- Become a member today.
- Advertise with the Long Beach Post or Long Beach Business Journal.
- Give a tax-deductible donation to our Investigative Reporting Fund, which is currently focused on coverage of homelessness.
- Shop at our merchandise store.
Most importantly, read and engage with our coverage. From city hall to special investigations, to documentary-style video to podcasts to arts and culture, we will keep you informed. A great way to follow us is to sign up for our newsletters here.
We also look forward to working with those—from those entering the business to those legacy publishers who have maintained their civic commitment—who share our passion for the work ahead, reviving local news and the democracies it feeds.
Support our journalism.
Hyperlocal news is an essential force in our democracy, but it costs money to keep an organization like this one alive, and we can’t rely on advertiser support alone. That’s why we’re asking readers like you to support our independent, fact-based journalism. We know you like it—that’s why you’re here. Help us keep hyperlocal news alive in Long Beach.