Local news reporting is the heartbeat of the journalism school – the foundation for all that we do.
Students cover each borough of New York City through focused reporting.
After all, the school’s slogan is “Reporting Begins Here.” As Dean Jelani Cobb has said: “We eat, sleep and breathe reporting, which is the core of our mission.”
Watch the video at right to see how students make a borough their beat in the Bronx Bulletin course.
Local Matters
High-quality local news coverage is crucial to building trust with our readership and audiences.
What binds journalists to the people they cover is the crucial accountability reporting on regional government, local business and powerful people in communities.
Trust-building happens at the local level. But with the decline of local newspapers in many communities, that close relationship between reporter and citizen is threatened. News deserts have developed, depriving citizens of local information and the ability to self-govern.
At Columbia Journalism School, preparing students to strengthen local journalism remains a key pillar of the School’s mission, equipping emerging reporters with the skills, ethical grounding and hands-on experience needed to serve communities through accountability, public-interest and community-centered reporting.
City Newsroom Course
One of the School’s signature opportunities is the City Newsroom course, a fully student-run local newsroom based at Columbia Journalism School. Working under faculty guidance, students report in real time on stories unfolding across New York City while gaining experience in breaking news, enterprise and community-centered journalism.
Students cover beats including politics and housing, education, immigration, arts and culture, producing reporting grounded in accountability and public service. Through hands-on work across the five boroughs, they learn how to tell stories that connect with readers and better serve local communities.
Explore students reporting in real time through City Newsroom's Substack.
Loan Repayment Assistance Through Local News Careers
Work in a local newsroom and get help to pay back your student loans.
Our pilot Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) — the first of its kind in the journalism industry — was announced by Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb in 2023. The program may lend up to $30,000 over three years to help you make your loan payments, and then forgive that loan. Since its launch, LRAP has distributed more than 100 awards over three years, providing more than $1 million in total assistance.
Read more about the impact of LRAP on local newsrooms in ‘A weight was lifted’: Journalism School awards $450,000 in loan repayment assistance to 45 graduates of journalism schools from Columbia Daily Spectator.
At Columbia, “local” means New York City. And the City Newsroom course, taught by Juan Manuel Benitez, sends students to every corner of New York City to do the kind of nuts-and-bolts local reporting that will translate to any community in the nation or world. Benitez, the Philip S. Balboni Professor of Professional Practice of Local Journalism, brings ranking New York City officials – including, for example, the city’s housing commissioner – to his classes where students can interview them and write stories based on those interviews. Each student is assigned a New York City beat, based on a locality or subject area; they hone their craft by interviewing ordinary community members as well as decision-makers. In 2025, the school’s reporting emphasis was on the NYC Mayoral Election. Students reported from all five NYC boroughs, focusing their stories on the issues that voters in the city care about most.
Watch the student-led broadcast from Election Day 2025.
Along with classroom work, the school’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, led by Emily Bell, has conducted authoritative and groundbreaking research into local news, particularly with its sweeping project on “pink slime” – the partisan news sites that masquerade as traditional local news.
CJS knows that financial support is a necessity for students who choose local news as their careers or as a stepping stone along the way. The growing loan reimbursement program (LRAP) is available for those entering nonprofit or local newsrooms; those newsrooms are one of the bright spots in the local-news ecosystem.
Additional opportunities are available through the school’s fellowships with the Institute for Nonprofit News, which provide a stipend to recent graduates interning in nonprofit (often local) newsrooms. More than a dozen graduates work on accountability projects while embedded in newsrooms throughout the United States.
Other coursework, including classes in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, encourage students to develop new nonprofit newsrooms. The solutions to the local-news crisis lie partly in developing organizations from the ground up that depend upon a combination of membership, philanthropy, events and other revenue sources.
Special thanks to the CJS Nonprofit Advisory Group:
- Neil Barsky, Founder, The Marshall Project
- Connor Boals, Head of Media, OceanX
- Susan Chira, Former Editor-in-Chief, The Marshall Project
- Anup Kaphle, EIC, Rest of World
- Jesse Hardman, Founder, Listening Post Collective
- Mukhtar Ibrahim, Editor-in-Chief, Suhan Journal
- Jacob Templin, Head of Video, Context News
- Andy Pergam, Founder, Camber
- Alissa Quart, Executive Director, Economic Hardship Reporting Project
- Amanda Richardson, Executive Director, Corp. for New Jersey Local Media
- Mazin Sidamed, Co-Executive Director, Documented
- Nikhil Swaminathan, CEO, Grist
- Sisi Wei, Editor-in-Chief, The Markup
- Matt Wynn, Executive Director, Nebraska Journalism Trust
Meet the Faculty
Local & Nonprofit News at CJS
J-School faculty apply deep reporting and data-driven techniques to enhance transparency in local news.
Their reporting across three different categories underlines the vital role high-quality nonprofit journalism can play in various communities.
As one of three winners, Foust will focus on underreported communities and the juvenile correctional system as a fellow at The Maine Monitor.
Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School, Peabody Award–winning filmmaker, and longtime staff writer at the New Yorker, discusses the complexities of journalism in 2024.
The Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors awarded Professor Benítez its Excellence in Television Award.
These digital news platforms led by Columbia Journalism School alumni are tackling human-rights issues and serving readers in practical ways.
