Cleveland residents step up to help news organization cover important civic events

For the last four years, a Cleveland news organization has trained everyday residents to help document key civic hearings, including city council meetings.

Throughout many American cities, the death of local news organizations has led to the public losing access to much-needed information from their local government, such as city council hearings, according to experts.

A study by the Clinton Foundation and the Knight Foundation found that only 11% of the news produced in Cleveland served "a critical information need," according to Lawrence Caswell, the managing editor of community for the nonprofit news organization, Signal Cleveland.

"Even though these meetings are open to the public, very little of the information from these meetings gets out to residents," he told ABC News Live. "Even though the whole reason [of] why they are open to the public is to make sure that the residents can get the information from these meetings."

But for the last three years, Carswell's news organization takes part in a national program that worked to fill that void by turning to civic-minded residents and training them to help document the public meetings.