Nextdoor Opens Early Access for Local Journalist Accounts on National Local News Day

Nextdoor Pilot Gives Local Journalists Verified Voice in the Neighborhoods They Cover

Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NXDR), the essential neighborhood network used by 1 in 3 US households, today opened early access for Local Journalist Accounts, a new pilot program that gives local journalists a verified account—a named presence within the communities they cover.

The timing of opening up early access is intentional. Today is National Local News Day, the first coordinated national effort to reconnect communities with local journalism at scale. The initiative is led by a coalition including Montana Free Press, the American Journalism Project, Press Forward, and Rebuild Local News, with more than 1,000 newsrooms signed on. Its premise is direct: Americans consistently say local news is essential to democracy and daily life, yet the infrastructure supporting it has collapsed at a pace most communities have not fully felt yet. It is the right moment to open this program to journalists who want to get in early.

The early access program builds on a three-month pilot across Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, and Billings, Montana, with 75+ journalists from newsrooms including the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Denver Gazette, and Hearst Newspapers' MySA (MySanAntonio.com). The pilot tested a straightforward idea: that neighbors engage more with a named reporter than with a brand page. Early signals from Dallas support that thesis. Journalist account engagement metrics show early signs of neighbor interest that justify expanding the pilot program.

Multiple pilot journalists sourced and published stories directly from Nextdoor community conversations. "I've been really excited to be able to target my questions to people living in neighborhoods impacted by a topic we're covering," said Zachary-Taylor Wright, a trending local reporter for MySA, a news site covering San Antonio, TX. "When a rainbow crosswalk was being removed due to state code enforcement, for example, I could use Nextdoor to hear directly from people who live nearby to find out what they thought about the issue."

Starting today, journalists at established local news publications in the United States can sign up for early access at nextdoor.com/journalists.

"Neighbors come to Nextdoor because they want to know what's happening where they live. Local information is the whole point — and local journalism is a critical part of that," said Nick Lisher, EVP, Product at Nextdoor. "We have spent the last year building a home for local newsrooms because informed neighbors make stronger communities. What the pilot showed us is that when a reporter shows up as a real person in those conversations, neighbors don't just read. They respond, they share, they become sources. We are opening this program early so journalists can help shape what that looks like at scale."

Verified Reach from Day One

Unlike publisher pages, journalist accounts are tied to a real person's name, byline, and beat. They give reporters DMA-wide distribution from the first post, with no follower base required. A reporter covering Oak Cliff does not need to build an audience before reaching neighbors in Oak Cliff. The reach is immediate and verified — Nextdoor requires neighbors to sign up with their real names and addresses, and our verification processes help create a network of real people connected to real places.

A Real-Time Window Into Every Neighborhood

New in early access: Metro-Wide Search and Feed gives journalist accounts the ability to search neighborhood conversations across their entire DMA in real time. A reporter can search for flooding in Englewood or a school board vote in Oak Cliff and immediately see what verified neighbors are actually saying, before a story goes to print. The feature is available to journalist accounts and currently has no equivalent on any other platform at the local level.

Stories That Started on Nextdoor

Pilot journalists used the accounts to source and publish stories that came directly from neighbor conversations. Wright, the MySA reporter with Hearst's MySA in San Antonio, sourced more than 10 published stories from Nextdoor in their first two months on the platform, including investigations into surveillance cameras and license plate scanners, coverage of a rainbow crosswalk attack, and an in-depth piece on a local business displaced by a $2.4 billion highway project. Emily Holshouser of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram received so many story tips through the platform that she started a separate Google Doc to track them all.

The timing reflects broader trends in local journalism. Nextdoor news consumption has grown 10% over the last three years — the steepest rate among major social platforms measured aside from TikTok and Instagram, per Pew Research — and six percent of US adults already get news there. Yet the approximately 27,000 local journalists employed in the United States have fewer viable platforms than ever, and until now, none built specifically for their beat.

Nextdoor's model is built around local relevance by design: every post is geotagged and distributed to verified residents, which means audiences are delivered back to the publication's own site — protecting the revenue relationships that broke down when other sites changed their algorithms. "Our users told us they signed up for Nextdoor to find everything most relevant to their neighborhood, and that includes news," said Lisher. "We built this program so that if you post something local, it reaches the people who live there. The audience relationship stays with the publisher."

"The stories neighbors care about are already happening on Nextdoor," Lisher said. "Local journalists just did not have a verified seat at that table. Now they do. We're excited to have early access journalists help us build this into something even better."

Journalists at local news publications across the United States can sign up for early access at nextdoor.com/journalists. Enrollment is rolling and spots will be confirmed as applications are reviewed.

About Nextdoor

Nextdoor is the essential neighborhood network for over 105 million verified neighbors, offering trusted local news, real-time safety alerts, neighbor recommendations, for sale and free listings, and local events. Nextdoor connects neighbors to the people, places, and information that matter most in their local communities. In addition, businesses, news publishers, and public agencies use Nextdoor to share important information and engage with neighbors at scale. Download the app or join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com. For more information and media assets, visit nextdoor.com/newsroom.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260409500027/en/

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