McKeesport, Pa. has been through a lot in recent decades. Andrew Conte tells the story in his book, Death of the Daily News. The town, located 20 miles from Pittsburgh, once manufactured about 70 percent of all steel tubing used in the United States, earning the moniker of “Tube City.” Like other towns in southwestern Pennsylvania, McKeesport fell on hard times in the 1970s and 1980s as foreign steel imports undercut American manufacturers. The city’s population, that once topped 50,000 in the mid-20th century, is now down to 17,500.

The McKeesport business district, with its movie theaters, furniture stores, jewelry shops, and three department stores, withered away. But on Jan. 1, 2016, McKeesport faced another blow--life without the Daily News, the newspaper that had covered the area since 1884.

Like so many other papers in small towns across the country, the failure was due to a migration of advertisers to the internet, along with the inevitable decline in readership. No longer were papers owned by a single family or group in the town being served, but rather by media companies whose first responsibility was to stockholders and hedge fund owners.

Along with the loss of an outlet that provided a rundown of local news, the paper meant something else, Conte said. “The newspaper represented a shared sense of identity,” he said. People realized that the local paper was more than headlines and town council coverage. Some recalled that their first job was delivering the paper. Others counted the times family and friends had been pictured in its pages over the years.

Politicians who first breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that they no longer faced tough questions during a campaign or over a council issue, realized they’d also lost their megaphone to communicate accomplishments to the community.

The paper's iconic downtown office, with a black-and-white exterior, checkboard-tiled office, with its large map on the wall, no longer allowed free access to the public. “We lost that connection,” said Conte, founder and manager of the Center for Media Innovation in Pittsburgh.

But Conte still believes local news has a future. The subtitle of his book is How Citizen Gatekeepers Can Save Local Journalism. The work has only just begun to find the right formula that would use modern technology to provide meaningful information to communities like McKeesport, he said.

Digital news outlets are succeeding in places like Santa Cruz, Calif., and in Pennsylvania, where the Center for Media Innovation is operating, said Conte. “We’re also learning what doesn’t work. The Houston Landing was started with a $20 million investment, but the public didn’t take to it. It closed,” he said.

“I’m more encouraged by operations that start small and grow,” said Conte, who calls on the need for “citizen gatekeepers” to bring journalism into the 21st century. “We’re all gatekeepers now. The news now belongs to all of us, and we need to make sense of that,” he said.