Cambridge is considering a controversial approach to saving local news: Having the city pay for it

“I think Cambridge deserves better,” Levy said.

Now, a new, untested, and controversial strategy has emerged that might help Levy, and other upstart local journalism operations like his: turning not just to readers, or donors, to support local news, but to the city itself.

The Cambridge City Council is weighing a proposal that would see the city pay $100,000 each year to support local news, pointing to the role a robust free press plays in monitoring city policy and keeping residents informed about and involved in the decisions that impact their neighborhoods. If enacted, the effort would be unprecedented in the United States, experts say, and raises ethical questions about journalistic independence: Could a newsroom that relies on funding from a city council be trusted to reveal wrongdoing at city hall?

But advocates say thoughtful, careful use of city tax dollars could be a model for sustaining local news coverage at a time when it has rapidly faded away.

That Cambridge, the state’s fourth largest city, could be without a local newspaper of its own was once unthinkable. The Cambridge Chronicle used to be a formidable news source, notable for being the longest-running weekly newspaper in the nation. Now the paper, owned by Gannett, does not have a reporter or regularly publish news about the city.

“I can’t quite believe Cambridge has become a news desert, but it has,” said Mary McGrath, a Cambridge resident and public radio producer.

McGrath spoke at a City Council meeting this month in support of a policy order that would see the city give $100,000 annually out of its own coffers to a local news fund that would be overseen by an independent third party, as part of a pilot for up to three years. Councilors plan to vote on it as soon as later this summer.

McGrath is also a member of a group called Cambridge News Matters, an association of concerned citizens — some with a background in media — who have been researching ways to bolster community reporting and plan to publish their findings in the coming weeks.

“We heard loud and clear that quality local journalism is critical to democracy, that you can’t have a cohesive community without an informed citizenry,” she said. And ”the business model to deliver this kind of journalism is broken.”

The ecosystem of news in Cambridge is indeed unusual. There is Cambridge Day, which posts articles about City Council meetings and other local happenings, and shares some arts, culture, and food news. Contributors are Levy himself, along with students, citizen journalists who volunteer, and freelancers who are paid. Cambridge Day for the last year has also distributed a weekly print edition, which is supported by the legal ads and public notices that appear in its pages.

Other news coverage comes from students at Harvard University’s undergraduate newspaper, The Crimson, who have stepped up coverage of local issues in recent years. The Boston Globe last year assigned a reporter — this reporter — to write about both Cambridge and Somerville. The Globe also has a Camberville-focused newsletter.

Cambridge News Matters’ members say they are planning to raise large sums of money from donors, colleges, businesses, and others in the city. They hope to bolster the kind of intensive, hyperlocal reporting on city life, government, and schools that is hard to fund, given the relatively small audience. Someday, members would love to see a brick-and-mortar newsroom anchored in Cambridge.

Their goal is ambitious: $800,000 in the first year, then up to $1.5 million in the third.

The money would be overseen by a foundation, which would distribute cash to worthy local news outlets, be they Cambridge Day or some other newspaper, blogger, podcaster, or other journalist who steps up to provide meaningful coverage of local issues.

Money from the city, according to this plan, would make up a fraction of the fund’s total, but it would be its most controversial component, particularly among those concerned it would complicate journalists’ duty to report without fear or favor.

“We want local news organizations to be able to cover government and other institutions and keep an eye on them — not always in an adversarial way, but always in an independent way,” said Dan Kennedy, the Northeastern journalism professor and media critic. “If you’re going to have a direct transfer of money from local government to local news organizations, you’ve lost that. So I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

Other government funding schemes for local news have gained steam in recent years, mostly at the state level. New York and Illinois now offer newsrooms hefty tax credits to offset local journalists’ salaries. In New Jersey, a nonprofit that is funded by the state, but overseen by universities, gives out grants that support local news and information, including to journalists. Washington, D.C., officials are considering a plan to give registered voters in the district “news coupons” they could use to subscribe to local news outlets.

But a transfer of city funds to a city newsroom has not been tried, experts said.

The concept might have once felt unseemly, but attitudes are changing, said Rick Edmonds, media analyst for the Poynter Institute.

“If you go back even 10 years, all sides of the equation were very dubious about government assistance,” Edmonds said. But the finances of local news have “gotten a lot worse,” he said, and the “temperature” has changed.

Many Cambridge city councilors are not quite convinced.

At a hearing on June 10, several elected officials said they believed their city needed more news coverage but were skeptical of the plan outlined in the policy order calling for the use of city funds, which is backed by Councilors Burhan Azeem, Patricia Nolan, and Joan Pickett.

“I’m not opposed to the idea and the effort, and the intent, but I don’t believe we should be spending city dollars on this,” Councilor Paul Toner said.

It is also, councilors said, not clear whether giving money from the city budget to a nonprofit in this way would even be legal, or, if so, whether other nonprofits focused on different pressing issues might deserve similar payments.

Cambridge News Matters is aware that, when it comes to municipal funding of local news, its idea would be breaking new ground, said Rick Harriman, a member of the group.

“As we look at the extreme problems that local news is having around the country,” Harriman said, “we need to consider some innovative approaches.”

For his part, Levy, of Cambridge Day, said that while he is somewhat wary of the idea, he “certainly would not reject the experiment” if taxpayer funds were made available to him.

“None of it is ideal,” he said. But, “I think we’re at a moment where a variety of things need to be tried, and it makes sense to try them, to find a model that might work in the pursuit of the necessary goal of keeping news alive.”

Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.