8 OctOber 8-14, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | OctOber 8-14, 2026 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | there’s no guarantee that that content is going to be any different,” Usher says. Is this the end of journalism as we know it? Probably. But the important part of that question may be the final four words. The need for journalism isn’t disappear- ing. What may be disappearing is an eco- nomic arrangement Americans spent much of the 20th century taking for granted: a ma- jor metropolitan newspaper employing enough people to routinely cover govern- ment, courts, schools, police, business, neigh- borhoods, sports and culture while subsidizing investigations that could take months and might never produce a dime. That model was never perfect. It ne- glected communities, concentrated power in a relatively small number of institutions and depended heavily on newspapers’ dominance of local advertising. The internet broke that dominance. Two decades later, nobody has completely figured out what replaces it. Possible answers include nonprofit news- rooms, public media, philanthropy, member- ships, subscriptions, newsletters, collaborations, and smaller independent pub- lications. Medill has tracked more than 300 local-news startups in the past five years, but says new digital outlets have not appeared quickly enough — or evenly enough — to re- place what has been lost. Ultimately, Miller’s concern isn’t simply what newsroom cuts mean for journalists. It’s what happens outside the newsroom. “You have to have some news-gathering entity that politicians are a little bit scared of,” she says. For Usher, Miami is an especially impor- tant test of whatever comes next. They began studying the city’s news eco- system more than a decade ago and describe Miami as a place where “the global, local and national all come together.” Its fragmented governments, enormous immigrant commu- nities, economic inequality and connections to international politics make covering it un- usually complicated. No single newsroom was ever going to reach everyone here. The question now is whether the ecosystem replacing the old model can col- lectively provide what Miami needs. “One-size-fits-all solutions are particularly a bad idea for Miami,” Usher says. “People in Miami really need to think outside of the box. They can’t do what everybody else in the news industry is doing.” Whatever form the next version of local journalism takes, Usher argues, access to reli- able information isn’t simply another product competing for people’s attention. “It is the stuff you need in order to get the rest of the needs you have in life filled.” The question facing Miami, then, isn’t whether there will still be news. There will be television stations, newsletters, websites, in- dependent journalists, nonprofits and what- ever comes next. The machinery of Miami won’t stop because reporters get laid off. It will simply have fewer people watching. [email protected] Paper Cuts from p7