Lost Storytellers

Community journalism in the era of clickbait  

An incisive and firsthand
look at the landscape of community news today, Lost Storytellers argues that the decline of local journalism
threatens the future of democracy. Award-winning photojournalist John
Pendygraft asks: How did Americans lose trust in the media, and how can their
local newsrooms earn it back?

Pendygraft
uses his own experiences at Florida’s largest newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, to illustrate why
trusted local reporting matters more than ever in the era of “fake news,”
clickbait, conspiracy theories, and social media. Through interviews with his
colleagues, the history of his own paper, journeys into the evolutionary
psychology of storytelling, and examples of the ways multinational media
conglomerates hook readers on news cycles of chaos and crisis, Pendygraft
argues that community journalists can reclaim their roles as local
storytellers—and that the public good demands that they try. Lost Storytellers offers insights for
all who feel confused about the media, politics, and the well-being of their
communities in the information age.