In journalism, local news refers to coverage of events, by the news, in a local context that would not be of interest to another locality, or otherwise be of national or international scope. Local news, in contrast to national or international news, caters to the news of their regional and local communities; they focus on more localized issues and events. Some key features of local newsrooms include regional politics, weather, business, and human interest stories.

Local news readership has been declining in recent years, according to a recent study. As more and more television consumers tap into streamed programming, local news viewership is declining. Nikki Usher, an associate professor at the College of Media at the University of Illinois, argued in "The Complicated Future of Local News" that "critical and comprehensive local news is a recent invention, not a core element of the history of American democracy."

Conversely, citing Alexis de Tocqueville in the second volume of Democracy in America (1840), political scientist Robert D. Putnam noted in the first edition of Bowling Alone (2000) that differences between the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation in the United States versus Baby boomers and Generation X in local civic association membership rates and various forms of civic and political engagement was significantly associated with generational differences in news consumption broadly and of newspaper subscriptions especially, such that Americans born before 1946 reported in a Yankelovich Partners survey at the end of the 20th century that they derived belongingness from local newspapers at more than twice the rate of Americans born after 1964.

Opt-outs of local television news are frequent before, during, or after national evening news television programming. Television networks can also commission or make provisions for local stations to produce longer standalone local news programs. Some local television markets/viewing areas within a country may even have a dedicated 24-hour local news channel. Local news stations have also started covering less and less local politics in favor of stories that they believe will garner more clicks or attention. A study has also shown that there has been less investigative journalism within local news stations in recent years.

Local news largely covers the following:

National and international news, however, tend to cover a wider range of content, including news concerning specialized institutions of wide-ranging international power or influence, such as:

In the United States, local news is provided on local commercial broadcasting channels (some of which are television network affiliates). They can either be standalone newscasts that run for at least a half-hour or short segments that air attached to national morning newscasts approximately 25 and 55 minutes past the hour. As not all stations are owned and operated by a television network, the graphics, branding, and studio designs of a station's newscasts often differ from the network they are affiliated with although in recent years, affiliates have made some form of on-air reference to their corresponding networks in the branding of their newscasts. In addition, the local news departments of stations also superimpose their on-screen digital clocks, thermometers, and (occasionally) local news tickers on graphics provided by networks during morning network newscasts. Some cable channels are dedicated to local news coverage. Examples of this include NY1 in New York and WJLA 24/7 News (formerly NewsChannel 8) in the Washington, D.C. market.

In Canada, the commercial broadcasters such as CTV have regional morning newscasts. There is also a bloc in the late afternoon dedicated to regional news.