By David Bauder
NEW YORK (AP) – Nextdoor is a social media site aimed at creating connections between neighbors, seeking to shake off the uneven past and its ineptly harboring nagging sensation. how? I’m looking for help from professional journalists.
The company announced its partnership with more than 3,500 local news providers on Tuesday. As part of the redesign, it has also expanded its ability to alert users about bad weather, power outages and other hazards, and is using AI to improve recommendations for restaurants, services and local points of interest.
“It should be well worth it that they’re creating for their neighbors. They feel they need to open Nextdoor every day,” said Nirav Tolia, co-founder and CEO of the company. “And that’s not the case today.”
The possibility that Nextdoor will help itself and the journalist at the same time is most interesting.
Nextdoor carries some of the local news stories from providers in the area where users live. If people want to know more, they include links to news sites. At the time of release, Nextdoor has over 50,000 news articles available, representing more than three-quarters of the app’s “neighborhood.”
The future of news that never arrived
When Nextdoor began in 2011, the local news industry was in the early stages of the free fall that continues today. According to a survey published this month by Muck Rack and Rebulding Local News, the number of US journalists has fallen from 40 per 100,000 in 2002 to more than eight today. Almost a third of the country’s counties do not have full-time journalists.
This uproar came with an app with promising premises and infrastructure, and perhaps a template for future local news. Its users – Nextdoor liked to call them “neighbors” – was organized in over 200,000 different regions. What does the building go down the street? Who serves the best burgers?
But the developers of Nextdoor knew about technology, not the news business. They initially didn’t see the role of professional journalists.
“In our early days, we thought our neighbors would take over as mostly civic journalists and local reporters,” Tria said. “I think we’ve come to the conclusion that our neighbors can only do that much.”
Worse, the site has become a racist and crank magnet. Nextdoor has become full of doubt. Why are people of different colours and nationalities walking down the streets? – That the moderator had to spend a considerable amount of time eradicating racist posts and preventing rules.
For some users, negative outweighed the positive.
“Nextdoor has been a valuable resource for my family,” wrote Ralinda Harvey Smith, a woman from Santa Monica, California, in 2020 in the Los Angeles Times. He offered to leave some on her pouch. ”
“But for a long time I’ve seen remnants of racism across the site, leaving me with bad feelings about the app, not just about the city I love,” Smith wrote. This caused her to log on less.
You are trying to make NextDoor essential to your users
Whatever the reason, sufficient users fully consider that their leader is forced to make the changes that are currently announced. The site has 100 million registered users, but at least once a week, there are only about 25 million people on the site, Tolia said. Nextdoor, which was published in 2021 to attract new funding, wants to see them more often.
Nextdoor hired former executive of Georg Petschnigg of The New York Times as chief design officer overseeing the changes.
The company said its investigation would like users to go beyond utilitarian information and learn more about what’s going on in the community. Other social networks likewise bring more external material, Tria said. “Relying on user-generated content is unpredictable in terms of quality, timeliness and relevance,” he said.
“If I had worn their shoes, I would be doing this. I don’t know why they didn’t do it early, but that’s the answer, not me.” This spring Semer speculated that Todd was interested in buying Nextdoor. Todd did not argue about it.
He is waiting for Nextdoor to have a real commitment to the news or simply to reach more eyeballs.
“It’s an opportunity to do one thing that Facebook has been made and I chose not to,” Todd said. “I don’t want this to be on the path that just tries to get traffic for traffic.
The irony of interacting with professional journalists has not been lost.
“The old ones are like new again,” said Sam Chorke, manager of distribution and audience growth at the nonprofit news research lab. Hundreds of members include the Texas Tribune, the Plateau Daily News in Highlands, North Carolina, and the Daily Yonder in Whitesburg, Kentucky.
Several of the participating news organizations have joined Nextdoor and “My hope is that our members see a huge profit from it,” Chorke said.
I want a mutually beneficial relationship
The local news industry is struggling with the same problems that have led to its downfall over the past 20 years. The number of readers and advertisers is declining. Off-hand comments by Tolia – on how people were picking up “snipple of dead trees” from their driveways to get their news – speaks to the decline of prospects.
Tim Franklin, head of Northwestern’s Medill Local News initiative, said emphasis on the Facebook platform and Google’s increasing use of AI at the expense of referrals to news stories is adding to the death spiral.
“If Nextdoor is another ship to take readers to news sites, especially local news sites, it will be a real moment of vulnerability and a real opportunity for local news organizations,” and the concern that relying on third parties is unpredictable would be a real opportunity.
Josh Schnetz, who runs a series of local news operations in New York City and Long Island, including Flushing Time and Park Slope Courier, has already made material appearances at Next Door with a soft launch, increasing traffic to the site.
“We feel that the media is in an evolutionary state, and there is no playbook,” Schnepps said. “My goal is to put content in front of as many people as possible. I’m happy to be a guinea pig,” he said.
Both the industry and the company need help. Maybe they can help each other.
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment on the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
Original issue: July 15th, 2025, 2:37pm EDT
