Brier Dudley: News deserts still expanding according to latest report
This isn’t what you want to hear in a presidential election year, but 55 million Americans now have little to no local news coverage where they live.
That’s according to the latest “news desert” report, released by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School.
It said the U.S. has now lost more than a third of its local newspapers since 2005. That’s left 208 counties with zero local news sources, up from 204 last year, and 1,563 counties with only one local news outlet.
“By any statistical measure, the local news crisis is deepening, it’s getting worse,” said Tim Franklin, the Medill initiative director and local news chair.
The trends “should be of concern to anyone who cares about civic affairs and the health of local communities,” he said.
Counties that lost local news coverage are mostly poorer than average and three-quarters are predominantly rural.
It’s not all bad news. The report includes a dozen “bright spots” where local outlets are finding success, and it tracks progress at 52 news startups.
But overall, Medill’s report paints a grim picture of an industry considered essential to the health of democracy. This should prompt policymakers to take action to save what’s left of the local news ecosystem, beyond efforts in a few states.
But I said the same thing about previous news desert reports and so far Congress hasn’t made it enough of a priority. Perhaps things will be different in 2025.
Meanwhile, according to the report:
- The pace of newspaper closures held steady, averaging nearly 2.5 per week, including 127 closures over the last 12 months.
- More than 7,000 newspaper jobs were lost between 2022 and 2023, including those of nearly 2,000 journalists. Several hundred were lost the year before.
- Medill estimates 279 counties are at high risk of losing local coverage, up 22% from the 228 on its watch list last year.
- The 500 largest dailies and weeklies lost a combined 2 million print and digital readers in the past year, and circulation is down 60% since 2005.
- More than 180 formerly daily newspapers now print fewer than three days a week, and only a third of the more than 1,000 dailies left still print seven days a week.
Medill found the number of local newspapers is down to just under 5,600, with 80% of those weeklies. The ecosystem also includes around 630 stand-alone digital news sites, 224 public broadcasters and 680 ethnic media outlets.
Meanwhile, consolidation is accelerating.
Mergers and acquisitions are up 43% this year, with 258 papers sold in 75 transactions. Many involve Carpenter Media Group, the Southern chain that acquired Washington’s Sound Publishing in January and Oregon’s EO Media in October.
The six largest chains now own 20% of the country’s newspapers and about half of the dailies, according to Zach Metzger, Medill State of Local News Project director.
New in this year’s report is a count of “network news sites” such as Patch, Axios Local and States Newsroom. It counted 740 such sites, but they are not doing a lot for news deserts.
Only 2% are in non-metro areas and 80% are concentrated in just 10 states. Many aggregate news reported by others, so their contribution is a mixed bag.
The tally found a net gain of 81 stand-alone, digital news sites over the past year. But 30 of them are operated by newspapers that stopped printing and 87% are in metro areas.
Medill’s report noted that grants totaling $1.23 billion went to journalism outlets and organizations over the last six years.
Yet few of those dollars went to news deserts, which are mostly in rural and suburban areas.
Metropolitan areas received 97% of the grants and 99% of the grant dollars, according to Medill’s analysis of the top 7,500 journalism grants over the last six years.
Altogether the report documents a growing divide in the country that makes it harder to find common ground and solutions to big challenges.
“We’re seeing this kind of gulf between news haves and have-nots increasingly widen,” Metzger said, “and with that comes all of the detrimental effects we see in news deserts — the loss of civic engagement, the loss of voter participation.”
Associated Press cutting workforce
The Associated Press plans to cut its workforce by 8% through layoffs and buyouts, further thinning an organization that’s been a cornerstone of America’s news infrastructure.
The cuts follow decisions earlier this year by two of the largest newspaper chains, Gannett and McClatchy, to mostly stop using AP as they cut costs.
Many newspapers are narrowing their focus on just local news and paying less for wire services that provide regional, national and international news.
Local news is their franchise but this trend is giving subscribers less comprehensive reports of what’s happening. It’s also further reducing resources that the AP has to cover news in every state and on every continent.
No wonder Americans are becoming more isolationist. If they still have a local newspaper, chances are good it’s not doing much to inform them of what’s happening in the rest of the country and world and how they might be affected.
AP spokesperson Lauren Easton declined to comment on how the loss of newspaper clients contributed to the cutbacks.
Revenue from U.S. newspapers has fallen to about 10% of AP’s revenue, down from 100% when AP was formed in 1846 as a cooperative to serve newspapers, Press Gazette reported in June.
AP CEO Daisy Veerasingham announced the cuts in a staff memo.
“We all know this is a time of transformation in the media sector. Our customers — both who they are and what they need from us — are changing rapidly,” Veerasingham wrote.
Veerasingham said accelerating the AP’s move toward a “digital-first news report” will “require making some difficult changes so we can invest more fully in our future.”
As an example of digital-first journalism, she noted recent election coverage with live video, visuals and “engaging interactives.”
The memo said less than half the cuts would affect news employees, and most affected employees are in the U.S.
An AP story reported that 121 News Guild members would be offered buyouts, and fewer than that many union members would be laid off.
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