Sarah Stonbely (Ph.D., New York University, 2015) is a researcher who focuses on local journalism, civic media, ecosystem mapping, and media policy at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, New York. Before that she served as the director of the State of Local News Project at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she managed the effort to map and assess the state of local journalism across the country for the 2023 report. Prior to that, Sarah served as the research director for the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, where she produced white papers and research reports on collaborative journalism, the effects on content of changing media ownership, media policy, ethnic and community media, and the structural correlates of local news provision. She also led impact evaluation for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a first-in-the-nation public funding mechanism to support news and information initiatives in the state.