“What we say here cannot stay here. We have to take it out there,” said David Brown, assistant dean for community and communication at the Klein College of Media and Communication, in his opening remarks at the inaugural Keystone News Summit.  

The summit, held May 15–16 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, brought together educators, policymakers and media professionals to address the challenges facing local journalism in Pennsylvania. 

It featured panel discussions about philanthropy in the newsroom, diversified newsroom business models, university partnerships, and government and legislative programs and initiatives. Brown began planning the summit alongside partners at his alma mater, Duquesne University, in 2023, in recognition that many communities across Pennsylvania lack consistent, reliable news coverage. 

“People are concerned that folks have less access to the information they need about their local community,” said Logan Molyneux, chair of Temple’s Journalism Department, who participated in the summit. “Why is this road construction happening? Who’s approving that new building going in over there, and what’s it for? Who’s making decisions about my taxes, or water rates?” 

The need for the summit, Brown said, was further emphasized during the 2024 presidential election, when Pennsylvania and its issues were front and center in both local and national news coverage. 

“We have 67 counties across the commonwealth, how do we know where the news deserts are?” Brown said. “There was impetus for a broader conversation that went beyond Temple and Duquesne. We needed a summit that would not only examine the state of local news in Pennsylvania, but that would bring together the people who could actually do something about it.” 

Hosting the summit in Harrisburg was no accident. Engaging legislators and exploring their role in supporting local journalism was a priority for Brown and the rest of the summit organizers. Among those in attendance were State Representative Justin Fleming (105th District), State Representative James Struzzi (62nd District), and State Representative Jordan Harris, (186th District) Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee. 

The two-day event also drew strong participation from Pennsylvania’s academic community, including journalism professors, department chairs, leaders of university journalism initiatives and collaboratives, and even students, from institutions like Lehigh University, the University of Kansas, Penn State University, Northwestern University, Point Park University, Franklin College, Duquesne and Temple. 

“Having students in the room was critically important, because we’re hoping that they will be able to implement the solutions that come,” Brown said. “This is more their future than ours, in terms of what role they can play in making sure that local news doesn’t go dark.” 

Klein College Dean David Boardman attended the summit and supported Temple’s participation. Boardman formerly served as executive editor and senior vice president of The Seattle Times. He was also founding chair of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the nonprofit that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has an extensive history working with different news outlet models. 

“It’s the most challenging time for local journalism, but it’s also an exciting, invigorating time,” Boardman said. “This event brought together some of the best minds in Pennsylvania to together forge a path forward.” 

Molyneux moderated two of the summit’s panels. A consistent theme across the summit, he said, was the need for journalists and other providers of information to build strong relationships in their communities. 

“Journalists assume that people will always turn to them for the news, and I don’t think that’s the case anymore,” he said. “People shared all sorts of ideas for building relationships, including things that you might think have nothing to do with journalism, like having local rock concerts in your newsroom, Tiny Desk style. But also just taking the time to be with and show commitment to the members of the community that you’re trying to serve.” 

One of the panels focused on university partnerships, an area where Klein has emerged as a trailblazer through initiatives like its Center for Community Engaged-Media, and the hyperlocal newsrooms Germantown Info Hub and Kensington Voice, both founded by Klein and later turned over to the communities they cover. 

Plans are already underway for next year’s summit, and Brown and the other organizers hope it will become an annual mainstay in Harrisburg.  

For Brown, it is natural for Klein to lead an initiative supporting local journalism, but its success, he says, depends on collective effort. 

“Temple has a reputation for solutions-based journalism. We teach it to our students. We live it in our practice,” he said. “But we really wanted to bring people together to have these ideas start to percolate, because we can do more together than we can separately.”