A new report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University found the local news market continues to decline. It echoes reports from earlier this year on the decline of local news.
Local news issues
The report found numerous issues in local news, including that local newspapers continue to fold at a rapid pace. More than 130 papers have shut down in just the past year.
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Since 2005, almost 40% of all local newspapers have gone under.
That has also created more news deserts, where people have no access to local news of any kind. The report found 213 counties with no source of local news and another 1,500 counties with only one source.
“That’s 50 million Americans who have either no or very limited access to local news,” Tim Franklin, one of the authors of the report and professor and chair in local news at the Medill School of Journalism, told Straight Arrow News. “ I think the implications of that, for communities and for the country, are profound.”
While print newspaper readership has been declining for years, another issue the report found was that digital readership for local newspapers is also shrinking.
Researchers looked at web traffic for the 100 largest newspapers in the country. Their monthly page views have declined by more than 45% over the last four years.
“Part of it was about three years ago, Meta or Facebook de-emphasized news in its feeds, which resulted in a drop in traffic from social,” Franklin said. “And especially over the last year, we’re seeing people go directly to AI platforms, ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, or pick your platform… News organizations are not getting the same search traffic that they used to get from, say, Google.”
That lower readership also decreases ad revenue, which historically makes up most of the income for local news agencies.
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Since 2005, 40% of all local newspapers have shut down
“Over the course of the past 20 years, it’s down 75%, which is just a huge drop,” Franklin said. “That is the biggest problem, I think, being faced by the industry now.”
Another issue laid out in the report is the potential impact of defunding public broadcasting. President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year to do just that.
“What we found is that there are nine counties where public radio is the only remaining news source,” Franklin said. “So, if those stations go away, and they’re now under considerable financial pressure, this news desert problem is going to get worse.”
Why it’s concerning
The report laid out many ways in which a declining local news market impacts communities.
“Turnout in local elections goes down, the number of candidates seeking local office goes down,” Franklin said. “In some cases, it also leads to higher government spending and higher government borrowing costs because there’s no journalist minding the store or monitoring what’s happening in those communities. It also leads to more corruption.”
Franklin added it has an immeasurable impact on communities.
“It’s a place where a community can see itself and get to know itself,” Franklin said. “And so, when local news goes away, I think that sense of connectedness really evaporates in many cases.”
Numbers show people have increasingly turned to AI assistants to get their news, but a recent report showed that those assistants are not a reliable way to get your news.
Another part of the ongoing concern is the consolidation of ownership of local news outlets.
More than half of America’s major daily newspapers are owned by just a few major companies.
The new report showed that of all the papers that closed in the last year, most of them were owned by private, independent owners.
“Many of those owners are now succumbing to economic pressures, and that’s a really troubling sign because not only does it hurt communities, but it also leads to this trend of further consolidation in the industry,” Franklin said.
What can be done
While the number of local newspapers is declining rapidly, there are news startups popping up around the country.
“We’ve seen about 300 startups in local news over the past five years, so it’s an average of about 60 a year,” Franklin said. “I think that’s good, but the problem is that the creation of the new local news organizations is not coming close to keeping pace with what’s being lost.”
Those startups tend to come from major cities, according to the report, which found that of the 10,000 largest journalism grants, accounting for $1.1 billion, 98% of that money went to organizations in urban areas.
That’s an issue because news deserts tend to be found in poorer counties with smaller economies and less educated populations. Nearly 80% of news deserts are also found in places the USDA considers rural.
Franklin said another way to help the issue would be to leave funding for public broadcasting in place.
“I also think that public radio had the potential to be a solution, or a partial solution, to the local news crisis, because these are well known brands in their communities,” Franklin said.
