My town had a local newspaper for a while which went away. Now I have basically no source of information about local planning, zoning, etc. board meetings. I suppose I could more regularly attend town meetings and so forth but that often isn't really an option.

Your town/municipality doesn't have a website with all that info? Granted, most town websites are horrid to navigate, but the information should be there.

Even when there is a website with meeting minutes/notes/bylaws/zoning info, it's really helpful to have someone who knows what the government is talking about to sift through, and highlight the important bits.

Likewise, I can go down to the river, and start taking water samples, to figure out whether or not the local factory is polluting the waters. I'd really rather not, though.

Not really. There's no consistent source of information about upcoming issues, votes, etc. There is info about upcoming meetings but then you need to personally attend.

There's a lot of information that flat out doesn't make the internet.

And in most towns, it's been my experience that decisions are usually already made by the time it is.

The local political beat used to mean going and sitting through council meetings. Now there's no one reliably doing that.

Facebook groups + alderman + local FOIA by activist citizens is what has been developing here.

I used to read dnainfo in chicago everday but they shut it down last year. It was the only news i really cared about.

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/

nextdoor.com? Though mine seems to be filled with people complaining about things, and lost dogs...

It's a 7,000 person largely rural town. There's the occasional piece on wickedlocal but basically nothing systematic.

My small town has a Facebook group that’s been filled with trump trolls. It’s disheartening.

Nextdoor can fulfill that role to some extent. As long as someone cares enough to post.

It's surprising that the BBC think it's surprising.

I wonder what the local news situation is in the UK.

Apparently it's struggling over here as well:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43106436

That said, I suspect there's more chance of local newspapers surviving in the UK than the US, if only because we tend to like tradition more over here and because local papers in many UK towns are well... locally owned. For instance, the main one in my town is (as far as I can tell) run by the community, written by regular people there and funded by ads almost entirely placed by local businesses. So there's less chance of a bean counter closing it down because the company's bottom line is at risk.

Overall though, they're also not doing so hot overall.

Do many local stories appear on the news wires?

No. The point being made is that many smaller papers, which are mostly owned by large publishers, have some original, local content with the rest being non-local wire stories.