Invisible Ink

The Crisis in Local News

The long-term decline in the number of newspapers in the U.S. is accelerating, according to a report from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.

If the present trend continues, by the end of next year, the country will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as recently as 2005.

According to co-authors Penelope Muse Abernathy and Sarah Stonbely, “Most communities that lose a local newspaper in America usually do not get a replacement, even online.”

Among salient points made by the authors:

• There are roughly 6,000 newspapers left in America, down from 8,891 in 2005.

• Papers are disappearing at an average rate of more than two per week.

• Of the papers that still survive, a majority (4,790) publish weekly, not daily.

• The counties most at risk of becoming news deserts are located in high poverty areas in the South or the Midwest.

• Minorities and poorer people without access to high-speed broadband are far more likely to live in areas that are news deserts or at risk of becoming one.

• The footprint for alternative local news outlets is tiny and they are mostly clustered around metro areas that already have some local coverage.

As I’ve previously reported, there are some efforts to address this crisis. One is the coalition of non-partisan philanthropies committing more than $500 million over the next five years to initiatives that support local journalism.

In addition, there is the ongoing effort by the Local News Network in Durango, CO, to provide localized coverage to several communities in that part of the country. (I’m on LNN’s advisory board.)

These efforts are critical and we need more of them to crop up all over the land. The alternative is bleak — as the authors of the Medill study conclude: The loss of local journalism "poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online."

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