Some Research on the Decline in Local News

Some Research on the Decline in Local News

This report is the fourth on the state of local news produced by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

according to the Pew Research Center, almost three-quarters of the general public remains unaware of the dire economic situation confronting local news organizations.

The News Landscape in 2020: Transformed and Diminished

Since the previous report in 2018:

• 300 newspapers closed, another 6,000 journalists employed by newspapers vanished, and print newspaper circulation declined by 5 million.
• Consolidation also increased, with the largest chains, backed by private equity firms and hedge funds, racing to merge with the last surviving publicly traded companies and form mega-chains with hundreds of newspapers, and management focused on shareholder return over journalism’s civic duty.
• Despite the efforts of other media, including commercial television and digital sites, to step into the breach, they have failed to thwart the rise of news deserts, especially in economically struggling regions of the country. Independent digital sites, once seen as potential saviors, are failing to achieve long-term financial security. While more than 80 local online sites were established in 2019, an equal number went dark.

Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost 2,100 newspapers, leaving at least 1,800 communities that had a local news outlet in 2004 without any at the beginning of 2020.

Half of newspaper readers and journalists have also vanished over the past 15 years. Many of the country’s 6,700 surviving papers have become “ghost newspapers” – mere shells of their former selves, with greatly diminished newsrooms and readership.

Economists define journalism as a “public good”4 because the information in news stories informs wise decisions about important issues that can affect the quality of life of the nation’s 330 million residents.

Vanishing Newspapers

• Since 2004, the United States has lost one-fourth – 2,100 – of its newspapers. This includes 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies or nondailies.
• At end of 2019, the United States had 6,700 newspapers, down from almost 9,000 in 2004.
• Today, more than 200 of the nation's 3,143 counties and equivalents have no newspaper and no alternative source of credible and comprehensive information on critical issues. Half of the counties have only one newspaper, and two-thirds do not have a daily newspaper.
• Many communities that lost newspapers were the most vulnerable – struggling economically and isolated.

From revolutionary days to the early 20th century, newspapers flourished in our country. As pioneers moved West in the 19th century, one of the first orders of business – right after hiring a lawman to keep order – was establishing a local newspaper. A newspaper gave a sense of time and place to the first settlers, and helped residents connect with one another as dusty crossroads grew into real communities.

The three-fourths of newspapers in this country have circulations under 15,000. About 1,800 of the communities that have lost a paper since 2004 do not have easy access to any local news source – such as a local online news site or a local radio station.

Vanishing Readers and Journalists

• Half of newspaper readers and journalists have vanished over the past 15 years. Total circulation decreased by 55 million between 2004 and 2019. During the same period, newspapers lost 36,000 journalists.
• The loss of both was driven by the collapse of the for-profit business model that sustained newspapers in the 20th century.
• In response, publishers either closed unprofitable newspapers or relied on cost-cutting measures to retain profitability, eliminating print circulation, especially in outlying areas, and laying off journalists who cover the news. Metro and regional daily papers have been disproportionately responsible for the decline in journalists.

The dramatic loss of readers and journalists also raises questions about the long-term financial viability of print newspapers in the digital era. The business model that sustained print regional and community newspapers in the 20th century relied on advertisers to provide 80 to 90 percent of the revenue. Local newspapers essentially purchased readers by offering subscriptions that covered only a fraction of the cost of gathering and producing the news, then turned around and sold their audiences at a premium to local advertisers, who wanted to reach people who lived in a certain geographic area. In the latter half of the 20th century, the sole surviving newspaper in many markets was often a de facto monopoly, able to set rates for both print advertisers and readers. As a result, papers in smaller markets often operated at 20 to 40 percent profit margins.

The New Media Giants

• The large hedge funds and private equity groups that purchased distressed newspaper chains in recent years introduced a new management philosophy that focused on bottom-line performance to the exclusion of journalism's civic mission. As revenues and profit margins fell sharply, these practices were widely adopted by other newspaper companies, leading to major cost-cutting initiatives and almost no investment in innovation.
• Despite the shrinking universe of surviving papers, the chains are bigger than ever – and, at the beginning of 2020, they were poised to grow even bigger, with the creation of highly leveraged mega-chains formed by the union of large publicly traded newspaper companies with large hedge funds and private equity chains. Privately held regional chains are also growing rapidly, too.
• Massive consolidation in the newspaper industry has shifted editorial and business decisions to a few large corporations without strong ties to the communities where their papers are located. This raises questions about the future journalistic and business viability of the very largest chains.

Entrepreneurial Stalwarts and Start-Ups

• A variety of legacy and start-up news outlets are currently attempting to fill the local news void, including digital sites, ethnic media, public broadcasting outlets and independently owned and operated newspapers.
• The leaders of these enterprises are experimenting with a variety of business models, including for-profit, nonprofit, publicly funded ones, as well as hybrid and cooperatives, in which the community owns the publication.
• Many of their endeavors show promise. But there is a critical need for more funding that would encourage the expansion of these enterprises into regions that lack a local news organization.

Business Model: A Bigger Role for Public Broadcasting

While 69 percent of NPR stations report that they offer local news, many of these stations don’t produce original reporting, but merely gather and read news reported by other outlets, according to Robert Papper, who is director of an annual survey of broadcast newsrooms conducted by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Public television stations are even less likely than radio stations to produce local and state news programs. Only 13 PBS affiliate stations offer a daily local news broadcast, and most are in large cities, according to Papper.

Technological Capabilities: The Algorithm as Editor

More Americans get news on social media sites than from print newspapers, and Facebook is the dominant social media site for news, with about 43 percent of Americans getting their news from there.

Facebook estimates there is not enough local news (minimum five stories a day) to launch “Today In” in about one in three communities.

Policies and Regulations: The State of Play

If the pandemic is decimating local news, it’s also prompting lawmakers to consider how to help the struggling industry. “It’s as if for the first time, people on the Hill care about newspapers,” says Seattle Times publisher and Capitol Hill watcher Frank Blethen.

Today there are several serious proposals to direct funds to local media, and hundreds of lawmakers from both parties have written to House and Senate leadership expressing their support.

The Path Forward: Reinventing Local News

News deserts contribute to cultural, economic and political divides in our increasingly polarized country. Over the past 15 years, the nation has lost a fourth of our local newspapers, which have historically been the prime source of credible and critical news and information in most small and mid-sized communities. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods, suburban towns and rural villages that have lost a newspaper are struggling economically, with as much as a third of residents living in poverty.

Rethinking journalistic principles necessarily involves reinventing the business model.

From our very beginnings as a nation, newspapers have played a vital role in building community. Strong newspapers fostered a sense of geographic identity and in the process nurtured social cohesion and grassroots political activism. The stories and editorials they published helped set the agenda for debate of important issues, influence the policy and political decisions we made, and build trust in our institutions. The advertisements they carried drove local commerce and regional economic growth by putting potential customers together with local businesses.

Ron Heifetz, professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, describes a newspaper as “an anchor” because it “reminds a community every day of its collective identity, the stake we have in one another and the lessons of our history. “

For residents in thousands of communities across the country – inner-city neighborhoods, affluent suburbs and rural towns– local newspapers have been the prime, if not sole, source of credible and comprehensive news and information that can affect the quality of their everyday lives. Yet, in the past decade and a half, nearly one in five newspapers has disappeared, and countless others have become shells – or “ghosts” – of themselves.

The stakes are high, not just for the communities that have lost newspapers — or are living with the threat of losing a local newspaper – but also for the entire country. Our sense of community and our trust in democracy at all levels suffer when journalism is lost or diminished. In an age of fake news and divisive politics, the fate of communities across the country – and of grassroots democracy itself – is linked to the vitality of local journalism.

The Loss of Local News and What it Means for Communities

Just as our elections are warped by congressional gerrymandering, so our news is warped by the nationalization of political debate by old- and new-media corporations that profit by pushing Americans into camps that fear and, in many cases, literally hate one another.

the fate of communities and the vitality of local news – whether delivered over the internet, the airwaves or in print – are intrinsically linked.

In an era of fake news, the diminishment of local newspapers poses yet another threat to the long-term vitality of communities.

between 1,300 and 1,400 communities that had newspapers of their own in 2004 now have no news coverage at all.

The Loss of Newspapers and Readers

In our connected age, there is an abundance of news and opinion, coming at us 24/7. The latest terror attack, the presidential debates or the shenanigans of celebrities. It’s all covered in minute detail, and we are free to share it and our opinions on the matter. But missing from that motley collection of trivia and substance is news of what is happening in our own backyards, save the personal videos posted by friends. Local news about a tax increase or a zoning decision is rarely of such interest that it trends, but it has an outsized impact on the everyday lives of residents in small towns, city neighborhoods and suburbia. When local newspapers fail, these communities are often left without any news organization to care about, watch over and report on the actions of the county commission or the local school board.

The United States has lost almost 1,800 papers since 2004, including more than 60 dailies and 1,700 weeklies.

There are almost 200 of the 3,143 counties in the United States without any paper. An additional 1,449 counties, ranging in size from several hundred residents to more than a million, have only one newspaper, usually a weekly. More than 2,000 have no daily paper. The residents of America’s emerging news deserts are often its most vulnerable citizens. They are generally poorer, older and less educated than the average American.

Seventy percent – 1,300 – of the newspapers that closed or merged were in metro areas.

More than 500 newspapers have been closed or merged in rural communities since 2004. Most of these counties where newspapers closed have poverty rates significantly above the national average.

Studies have found that closure of a competing metro daily often leads to governmental inefficiency and higher costs for city residents.

"You lose a community when you don’t have a newspaper"

Since 2004, circulation for the large dailies has decreased by more than 40 percent and newsroom staffing by a similar amount. A majority of the decline in daily circulation has resulted from the pullback of the large metros from rural areas.

Recent research has shown that when metro papers pull back circulation and coverage in outlying areas, participation and voting, especially in midterm state and local elections, goes down.

The Rise of the Ghost Newspaper

As hundreds of small weeklies and dozens of dailies vanished from the U.S. news landscape in recent years, thousands of other dailies and weeklies became shells, or “ghosts,” of their former selves. Many of these papers are still published – sometimes under the same name as in the past – but the quality, quantity and scope of their editorial content are significantly diminished.

Research by Duke University attempted to quantify the diminishment of local news by analyzing over 16,000 news stories provided to 100 randomly selected communities in one week. The study found that fewer than half of news stories provided to a typical community were produced by the local media outlet, and only 17 percent were about the community or events that took place there.

Recent internet postings by journalists have pointed out that over the past decade and a half, the U.S. lost more newspaper jobs than coal mining jobs – both in terms of numbers and percentages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 2004 employment in coal mining has declined 26 percent (from 70,558 to 51,866), while newspaper staffing has dropped 45 percent (from 71,640 to 39,210). Other surveys place the number of newspaper journalists even lower – 25,000 in 2017, down from 52,000 in 2008.

Bigger and Bigger They Grow

Consolidation of the newspaper industry, which places the ownership of many media properties into the hands of a few large corporations, shifts editorial and business decisions to people without a strong stake in the local communities where their papers are located.

The top 25 companies that own the most newspapers control the fate of nearly one-third of all papers, up from 20 percent in 2004. This included two-thirds of all dailies – 812 – and almost a fourth of all weeklies – 1,376.

Roughly half of all newspapers in the country changed ownership over the past 15 years, some multiple times.

Filling the Local News Void

However, most of these experiments [of starting local news companies] are centered in and around our largest cities and metro areas.

As of 2017, local and regional television newsrooms employ more journalists than do newspapers, according to a broadcast industry survey.

As viewership of the evening newscast declines, the most innovative stations are stepping up their digital efforts and experimenting with ways to revamp the delivery of on-air newscasts.

The most aggressive response to the loss of local newspapers has come from the more than 500 digital news outlets that span the country, covering everything from the environment to entertainment.

In many ways, the nation’s 1,700 licensed regional and local television stations seem the most obvious medium to fill the local news void. As of 2017, local and regional television newsrooms employ more journalists (27,100) than newspapers (25,000), according to a broadcast industry survey.

According to the 2018 Pew Report, between 2016 and 2017 “the number of people who say they rely on television for their local news fell 9 percentage points, from 46 to 37 percent.” Younger adults, under age 50, are much less likely to get their news from television than older adults.

2018 Knight Foundation report suggestions on how TV stations can step up game:

1. Focus on digital delivery of content, even though the return on investment isn’t always there – yet.
2. Innovate, not just on the digital side but with on-air programming as well. Every TV newscast looks like all the other TV newscasts, but executives seem reluctant to try something new.
3. Drop the obsession with crime, carnage and mayhem. Focus on ways to connect with local communities through issues such as education, the economy and transportation.
4. Increase enterprise and investigative reporting. That requires hiring more experienced journalists and/or providing more newsroom training.

The Challenges and Opportunities that Remain

Our sense of community and our trust in democracy at all levels suffer when journalism is lost or diminished. In an age of fake news and divisive national politics, the fate of communities across the country, and of grassroots democracy itself, is linked – more than ever – to the vitality of local journalism. Local newspapers have historically been a “tie that binds” people in a community.

Recent research has identified five lessons that are relevant to any local news organization hoping to survive and thrive in the digital age. Local news organizations that are successfully adapting:

1. Invest in their human capital – their journalists and sales departments. Human capital is what sets them apart and makes them relevant to residents and businesses in their community.
2. Tie their strategy and business model to the specific needs of the communities they serve. This means that, instead of one business model that works for most news organizations, as has historically been the case, there will be many.
3. Diversify their sources of revenue, moving away from print advertising. However, in most small and mid-sized markets, the majority of revenue will most likely come from advertisers and sponsors. Since advertisers follow audiences, news organizations need to follow the technology and follow their customers if they are going to follow the money. Therefore, successful news organizations build services and products that will attract dollars from local advertisers and engage local residents on a variety of platforms and venues.
4. Know when to compete, and when to collaborate, on both journalistic and business ventures. Partnerships may ultimately determine the ability of independent and nonprofit organizations to survive, since they are stronger together.
5. Have a strategy in place for transforming at least a third of their business model every five years. Their leaders establish five-year financial goals (for costs, revenue and profitability), and then identify and prioritize initiatives most likely to lead to long-term profitability and sustainability, even if that means lower profit today.

Economists call public service journalism a “public good” because the information conveyed through news stories helps guide decision-making at all levels of our society.

Therefore, some scholars are arguing that instead of being considered a “public good,” journalism should be considered a “merit good,” a product or service that should be provided free of charge by the government, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay.

Being literate, he [Michael Cormack Jr., CEO of the nonprofit Barksdale Reading Institute] argued, is about more than simply comprehending the meaning of words; it is about the ability to analyze arguments and identify what is supported by facts

The Enduring Legacy of Our New Media Barons

Less than a decade ago, in the wake of the worst recession since World War II, a group of private equity and hedge fund investors swooped in to purchase hundreds of financially struggling newspapers, many in bankruptcy.

The investment firms introduced a new way of thinking about the business management of newspapers and their journalistic mission, which often ran counter to the historic practices of traditional print newspaper companies. The standard operating formula often included aggressive cost-cutting, the adoption of advertiser-friendly policies, the sale or shuttering of under-performing newspapers, and financial restructuring, including bankruptcy. At the most extreme, their strategies have led to the closure of hundreds of local papers and diminished the important civic role of newspapers in providing reliable news and information that helps residents of a community make important decisions about governance and quality of life issues.

Outsourcing of news and sales operations to remote locations, and the establishment of regional publishers and editors, responsible for several newspapers. Both practices tend to weaken the ties of a local newspaper to its community.

With names like Digital First and “tronc” (short for Tribune Online Content), one might also expect these companies to be at the forefront of digital innovation. However, the major investment owners have proven slow to adapt to a viable digital model that offsets print revenue declines. In fact, they have often been outpaced in their transformation by traditional newspaper chains.

• The State of Local News: The 2024 Report

Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week;in the past year alone, 127 newspapers have shut their doors. In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether.

In this report we found that there are 208 counties across the country without any news source, up from 204 last year, and 1,563 counties with only one source. Altogether, this means that almost 55 million people in the United States have limited to no access to local news.

more than 180 formerly daily newspapers that now print fewer than three days a week. We also recategorized more than 30 newspapers as digital sites, as they have dropped their print frequency to less than once a week or suspended their print edition altogether.

At its current pace, the country will hit 3,000 newspapers closed in two decades sometime next year, with just under 6,000 remaining, the report said. At the same time, 43,000 newspaper journalists lost jobs, most of them at daily publications, with the advertising market collapsing.

While digital outlets have emerged to fill some voids, they’re closing at roughly the same rate as new ones start, the report said. There is talk of public financing helping the industry, and more philanthropic money is coming in, but none of that has changed the trajectory.

Research shows that the loss of local news is having an insidious effect on our democracy — contributing to polarization, decrease in voting, and government accountability. Local news is an essential lever to a healthy democracy; it helps communities understand what’s at stake in local elections, equips them to get involved in the political process by voting, contacting officials and running for office, reduces political polarization, and holds public officials accountable.

Over the past decade, the most useful construct for explaining the crisis that is playing out at the intersection of American media and democracy has been that of the “news desert.”

The great mesh of local media that underpinned our civic life—made up of thousands of newsrooms that tried, however imperfectly, however insufficiently, to tell the story of the United States—has been torn so violently that it no longer functions.

The United States is now losing an average of 2.5 newspapers every week on a trajectory that has seen the shuttering of just under one-third of local print publications—many of which had at least tried to develop a digital presence—since 2005.

Just as our elections are warped by congressional gerrymandering, so our news is warped by the nationalization of political debate by old- and new-media corporations that profit by pushing Americans into camps that fear and, in many cases, literally hate one another.