Sarah Stonbely (Ph.D., New York University, 2015) is a researcher who focuses on the journalism field, civic media, local news ecosystems, and media policy. She is currently a senior research associate at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, New York, where she is leading research on local journalism. Sarah is looking at how researchers, funders, and publishers themselves can expand the definition of local news to include the myriad ways people meet critical information needs now. Before coming to Tow, Sarah served as the director of the State of Local News Project at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she co-authored, with Penny Abernathy, 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.