This episode aired on October 13th, 2025 at 12:00pm.
How do you find out what’s happening in your community? your city? your state? Local newspapers and local television stations are vanishing due to a lack of resources and the changes that pushed so many of us to get our news online. If those news outlets are dwindling, how do communities have the information they need to vote on school board issues or consider how police are interacting with neighbors or hold elected officials accountable? Luckily, in some of these same places, people are stepping up to reimagine the potential of news, and especially local news. On today’s episode of Media Inside Out, we’re exploring how news deserts are affecting communities and how some towns are finding innovative ways to bring local journalism back to life. Let’s go inside!
Guests
Gene Sonn
While collaboration may be new to some in journalism, Eugene Sonn has been getting newsrooms to work together since 1998. Gene first did this as a reporter, then as WHYY’s news director and since November 2020, he has led the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative. Gene is excited to continue leading the collaboration of 30 newsrooms in its new home at the Center for Community-Engaged Media at Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication. When not helping reporters and editors work together, Gene can be found biking, brewing beer or sharing his rabid love of the Boston Red Sox with his two sons.
Danielle Smith
As the Editorial Director of Community News at Resolve, Danielle leads our printed community newsletter and the Equal Info Text Line, while also guiding the Info Hub Captains program, a group of neighborhood leaders who help shape our reporting by sharing the most pressing issues in their communities. Her career began on the assignment desk at ABC News Radio in New York City, followed by nearly a decade abroad that broadened her perspective before she returned to work as a freelance writer and later as an editor for Mommy Poppins, a national parenting website. She went on to serve as Development Director at Smith Memorial Playground in Philadelphia, and ultimately found her way back to journalism at Resolve.
Sarah Alvarez
Sarah is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Outlier Media, a national model for local nonprofit newsrooms based in Detroit. She is focused on increasing the utility of news through more rigorous identification of community information and accountability needs and aggressive development of methods and products to meet those needs. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Columbia University School of Law, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and was a JSK Fellow at Stanford University.