The New York Times has announced that outgoing executive editor Dean Baquet will turn his attention to a new fellowship the paper has started, supporting investigative journalism at the local level. In a letter announcing the fellowship, Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger had this to say:

The decline of local investigative reporting is a national tragedy. It means that fewer and fewer people across the country have access to essential information about their communities — too often there is no one to track school board meetings; comb through court dockets; or reveal the significance of everyday developments in towns, cities and states. No watchdog to keep local governments honest. No one to pursue a tip or unearth hidden information.

Say what you will about the Times — and I’ve said plenty — but this seems to be a genuinely good idea. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of Baquet’s leadership decisions in his previous position, but the mere fact of this fellowship is encouraging, and maybe he can do some good with it.

My favorite summer job in college wasn’t some high-profile journalism gig in New York or D.C. It was an internship at the High Point Enterprise newspaper in the small town of High Point, N.C. I was actually allowed to write, every day, and more than a handful of those stories made their way onto the front page. I worked closely with talented writers and editors who had been at the paper for decades and who actually cared about helping me find stories to cover and improve my writing. I got to watch reporters who had been at it for years, covering local politics and board meetings and crime stories with amazing skill.

I was assigned stories or dug up stories that actually mattered to the people who lived in the area and read the paper. I didn’t write my articles trying to make strangers on Twitter think I had my finger on the pulse. I wrote about the local pickleball league and the community garden at the library and the 70th reunion for the high-school class of 1945 because people in High Point cared about all of them, and because they read their local paper.

I got more heartfelt, personal responses to what I wrote in just a few weeks that summer than I got in my entire first year at National Review. I got handwritten notes from elderly women and even personal phone calls from a few readers who were touched by what I’d written. I got calls and emails from business owners and librarians and others in High Point who thought they had a story that might matter to the people around them and that they wanted me to tell.

All of which is to say: Good for the Times. Maybe there’s some hope for journalism, yet.