From crime to COVID, 110 newsletters aim to cover every corner of LA

Several media outlets have closed for good in LA, including the Burbank Leader, Glendale News-Press and La Cañada Valley Sun. Other local papers, like the Daily News and the LA Weekly, have been forced to drastically reduce their staff and news coverage.

USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism is trying to reverse the trend of newsroom closures and news deserts, starting with the City of LA. Students and teachers at USC have developed a system of newsletters to provide hyper-local information to every corner of the city.

“Rather than have one person cover one neighborhood, we could have one system cover every neighborhood throughout the city of LA, from San Pedro to Chatsworth,” says Gabriel Kahn, journalism professor at USC and the developer of Crosstown, which collects and delivers community-level data and analyses on issues like crime, air pollution, and COVID-19.