Your feedback matters. Let us know your thoughts on our work in our annual impact survey here.

EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

While online readership nationally is declining, EdNC is ahead of our target. Help us understand why

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/while-online-readership-nationally-is-declining-ednc-is-ahead-of-our-target-help-us-understand-why/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:
Mebane Rash at Cane River Middle School. Courtesy of Yancey County Schools

The 2026 State of Local News Report finds, “Over the past several years, readership of local news outlets, especially online readership, has dropped precipitously.”

That has not been the case for EdNC.

Thank you.

Take our survey

In an era where automation, AI, and bots are changing digital infrastructure, content, and readership as we know it, EdNC has stayed the course with our mission and theory of change, hitting our unique reader goals last week — two months ahead of schedule. 

Tom Rosenstiel, the founder and former director of media studies at the Pew Research Center and former executive director of the American Press Institute, has recently published a book, “The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy.”

In a chapter titled, “Beyond storytelling” and a section titled “Track how journalism is helping,” he shares the story of EdNC, concluding, “By having a clear goal of a public benefit, and designed by people largely outside journalism, a little-known nonprofit startup has created a serious educational publication that is making a difference.”

If you’ve been with us for a while, you may remember that each year we take some time to check in with our readers and hear from you directly about the difference our work makes across North Carolina.

Usually we hear back from about 2,000 of you, and your feedback year in and year out informs our work and our leadership and how we continuously iterate our architecture of participation.

Your feedback helps us even more than a donation.

What changes or improvements would you make? Let us know by taking our annual impact survey.

This survey will take no more than 5 minutes. These results will only be used anonymously unless you grant EdNC permission to use your comments alongside your name.

Thank you for helping us improve our work and leadership.