{"id":2,"date":"2026-01-28T19:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T19:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ascjcapstone.com\/spring-2026\/jnehrer\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2026-05-05T23:08:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:08:59","slug":"full-article","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ascjcapstone.com\/spring-2026\/jnehrer\/","title":{"rendered":"My Capstone Article"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After decades working for national media\u2019s biggest names, Paul Miller \u201cretired\u201d to Carmel-by-the-Sea in the 1990s. But instead of spending his days soaking in  Carmel\u2019s stunning  cliffsides, he did something a little closer to home: he bought a local newspaper out of destitute. Thirty years later, the Carmel Pine Cone<\/em> is a well-funded, well-oiled machine that prints weekly and is free to the eager public. Miller\u2019s Pine Cone<\/em> is a shining example of the Golden State\u2019s many thriving local news ecosystems, and a model for small-town press looking to beef up their ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In September 2025, in another corner of California, Aysha Pettigrew joined the Merced Sun-Star<\/em> as a California Local News Fellow. Their two year stint at the paper is funded by a UC Berkeley initiative to increase the number of journalists at local publications around the state. In November, just two months into their very first reporting gig, McClatchy Media laid off every single staffer at the Sun-Star <\/em>\u2014 except them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the fact that Pettigrew\u2019s salary was being paid for by the Berkeley program, and therefore not  an employee that McClatchy could lay off, they and the fellowship team determined that the best idea was to have them stay and cover the community that had just lost multiple journalists. The fellowship\u2019s purpose was now more important than ever in Merced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew that this was a possibility,\u201d they told me. \u201cBut I was like, \u2018I don’t know what my role is now.\u2019 I was hired to be the economic mobility reporter, and I was starting to carve out my beat and find my sources \u2026 now I kind of have to cover everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Right: Aysha Pettigrew, fellow at the Merced Sun-Star. Photo courtesy of Pettigrew & design by Jennifer Nehrer<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/div>

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In the same state that hosts an intrepid team of reporters covering a small town within a small county Pettigrew is a newsroom of one, covering Merced County mostly on their own. Pettigrew\u2019s experience highlights a sometimes hidden aspect of California local journalism: all that glitters is not golden in the otherwise aptly named state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judging a Book by its Cover<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On paper, California\u2019s local news landscape seems to be thriving. Low-population counties in the state hold their own against some of the United States\u2019 biggest when it comes to the ratio of people per news outlet in the area. Three of California\u2019s smallest counties \u2014 Sierra, Modoc and Colusa \u2014 have the best ratios of people per outlet (including physical papers) in the state, and appear to be miles ahead of other major counties including DC, Cook County (Chicago), Kings and Queens Counties (New York City) and King County (Seattle). A simple set of statistical calculations paints a very positive \u2014 and significant \u2014 picture of the average Californian\u2019s ability to get local news about their county, with the exceptions of Stutter and Alpine, which both have zero local papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a picture of a graph I produced for this project showing the ratio of residents in each California county per local news outlet. Counties with larger ratios (meaning more residents per outlet) are colored darker. This does not mean a smaller ratio is a healthier local news ecosystem, but it is something to consider.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find the full, interactive graph on the Multimedia Elements page<\/a>. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Matt Pearce, Director of Policy at Rebuild Local News, prefers to add a second statistic to present a fuller picture of who is bringing local news to California communities: RLN and Muck Rack\u2019s \u201cLocal Journalist Index<\/a>,\u201d a tool that analyzes how many Local Journalist Equivalents there are in each US county. Local Journalist Equivalents, per the tool\u2019s website, are representative of the amount of journalists in the area who cover almost exclusively local matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a picture of a graph I produced for this project showing the number of Local Journalist Equivalents in each California county per 100k residents, determined by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack. Counties with larger ratios (meaning more LJEs per 100k residents) are colored darker. Larger ratios mean that the county has a larger percentage of journalists covering local matters. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find the full, interactive graph on the Multimedia Elements page<\/a>. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

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\u201cThe number of publications in a given location is useful for trying to establish access to information in some respects, but it may not measure production as accurately,\u201d Pearce said of building the tool. \u201cThere are a lot of different ways of measuring the decline in local news production, local news access, and this was our particular contribution to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incidentally, California ranks near the bottom of the list for LJEs per 100,000 residents on average with just 6.1, placing it at 41st out of 50 states. Four California counties \u2014 Riverside, Fresno, San Bernardino and San Joaquin \u2014 rank among the ten lowest of US counties with populations higher than 500,000 when it comes to their LJE to population ratios. Riverside came in at second lowest with just 1.7 LJEs per 100,000 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interactive: Outlets versus LJEs<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n