‘We’re not trying to build a walled garden’: Why Nextdoor is partnering with 3,500 local news publishers

The news industry is facing seismic headwinds, as social networks have de-emphasized traditional news and AI search is impacting a once-reliable traffic source.

Local news has been especially hit hard. A report last year found that the U.S. has lost a third of its newspapers since 2005.

That’s the backdrop for Nextdoor’s new initiative. The neighborhood-focused social app announced a redesign last week that emphasizes local news. It’s partnering with over 3,500 publishers to contribute content that would appear in users’ feeds and help enhance urgent community alerts.

“… we’re not trying to build a walled garden. We’re not trying to take people’s information and co-opt it in some way. We’re not trying to replace local journalism,” Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia tells The Current in an interview.

“We’re just trying to be a healthy, vibrant and useful part of the information ecosystem.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What was the catalyst for this emphasis on local journalism?

Not only has the landscape for local news gotten worse, but even the little local news we access on other social media is starting to get de-emphasized. We have a deep belief that vibrant communities rely on local news for constructive civic dialogue.

We have 100 million users, so that’s a resounding chorus of voices telling us that local news is important. We decided to go against the grain and give distribution to those local news providers. It was a big deal for us because in our 15-year history, we’ve never let local news providers post directly to our feed. It’s always been user-generated content and we’ve had some public agencies like police and fire departments. In retrospect, seems so obvious.

This isn’t a leap of faith — it’s a natural evolution. When you live in a community, you want to know what’s going on. And one of the best ways to know what’s going on is to rely on local journalism. We have over 3,500 partners that will publish 50,000 articles a week, and we think that’s just the beginning. Ultimately, we want their videos, and we want their journalists engaging directly with our Neighbors [as Nextdoor calls its users].

The publications aren’t getting paid, so what are the benefits to them? Will this increase traffic, which, in turn, could generate more ad dollars?

However they monetize their readership, we should be driving audience to them. We’ve made this as easy and publisher friendly as possible, so we don’t keep users on our service; we send them away to the service that’s providing the content. We don’t host the content on our service, just the headline, a little snippet and an image. There’s no obligation for the publishers — they can get on and off any time they want.

As time goes on, maybe we’ll look at bringing publications together to create an Apple News or a Spotify-type subscription, but those are just ideas right now. Today, it’s very simple: We will send them traffic and ask for nothing in return. And we hope to prove to them that our Neighbors want their content.

Many platforms try to keep users inside their own ecosystem — and with AI-generated answers in search results, people may not click through to websites anymore. But your approach drives directly to publishers. Was the “state of the web” on your mind when launching this initiative?

It was on our mind, but the motivation was simpler: Our Neighbors want to stay informed. Local journalists are experts in things that matter to our Neighbors, so we’re just trying to connect them.

People have asked, “Are you trying to save local news?” Or “Are you trying to ensure AI doesn’t take over?” I think it’s arrogant for us to claim that. Our business is about making sure that our Neighbors get all the information they need about where they live. And we know that one of the most valuable sources of that information is local journalists. I’m kicking myself for waiting this long.

Could this be a model for local news in the future?

It’s a really good question. I am not an expert on the business model for local news. I am just an advocate for local journalism. There’s a great quote from the venture capitalist Michael Moritz in The New York Times: “I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity and gas.” I believe that.

I don’t know what the evolution is going to be like [of local news], but I know we’re not trying to build a walled garden. We’re not trying to take people’s information and co-opt it in some way. We’re not trying to replace local journalism. We’re OK sending our users to other places. We’re OK with the value exchange where we send publishers traffic for nothing in return. We’re just want to be a healthy, vibrant part of the information ecosystem.

Does this initiative incorporate AI in any way?

We are using AI to analyze articles and then generate a prompt for discussion. For instance, if there’s an article about a brand-new restaurant, the AI may prompt with, “Have you been to this restaurant?” or “What’s your favorite dish?”

Depending on how good you are at asking ChatGPT questions, that will determine the quality of its output. The same is true of Neighbor conversation and really of message boards across the web. If someone asks a good question, people are going to give a good answer.