Coronavirus is revealing why local news is so important. It's also killing it.

Our job is — or should be — to find out what the average person can't or doesn't have time to discover, and give them that information.News is also a business. They then either consolidated them, sold them off, shuttered them or folded them into a larger "news network" that pretends to be local, even if stories are shipped in by staff far away from the hearts of our communities.But no one should sell a local paper for profit — not when those local publications are as essential as highways and sewer systems to the people who live there.This democracy needs solid local reporting to survive — and in the midst of this global pandemic, it’s time for our billionaire class to step up and sacrifice a smidgeon of the vast wealth they’ve accumulated (often on the backs of the local communities) to support the real information infrastructure we will need to move forward.Yes, we can read and support our local publications, but everyone is cash strapped these days. People will seek out information, and others will be happy to provide something that looks like information — but it won't be accurate, it won't be actionable and it might well be dangerous.Matt Laslo is a reporter who has written for NPR, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and VICE News, among others.