New Report on News Deserts

By Mary O’KEEFE

Northwestern Medill – State of Local News released a study in October on how local newspapers are faring – and it does not look good.

The State of Local News Project was created by Northwestern University to study the future of local journalism. According to Zach Metzger, director of the State of Local News Project, it was predicted that by the end of 2025, the U.S. would have lost one third of its print newspapers; however, this year that threshold has already been crossed.

According to the local news initiative/Northwestern University’s release, “The loss of local newspapers is continuing at an alarming pace, deepening the local news crisis and further depriving people of information they need to make informed decisions. Local news deserts are spreading. A furious pace of mergers and acquisitions is underway, as many longtime newspaper owners bail and regional chains capitalize on opportunities. Meanwhile, the number of standalone digital local news sites has continued to grow.”

Medill also looked into the growing number of “ghost newspapers:” those that operate in name only and basically have no original local reporting.

“The local news crisis isn’t just about the loss of local outlets: it’s also about the diminution of community coverage,” according to the report.

The report found that in the past year 130 community papers have closed and about 55 million Americans live in places that could be labeled “news deserts.”

The report from local news initiatives found there are 206 counties across the country without any news source, up from 204 last year, and 1,561 counties with only one source of local news.

“Altogether this means that almost 55 million people in the United States have limited-to-no access to local news,” the report stated.

The loss of journalism jobs is on the rise as news sources diminish. The report found that about 7,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared between 2022 and 2023, compared to a few hundred the year before.

“There are now fewer than 100,000 people employed in the newspaper publishing industry overall, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 20 U.S. states, there are fewer than 1,000 newspaper employees remaining,” according to the report.

There has been a trend of larger newspaper chains buying up smaller, family-owned businesses, and closing or gutting them dramatically.

“As the mergers and acquisitions firm Dirks, Van Essen & April wrote in its 2023 year-end report, ‘Gone are the days of a few conglomerates snapping up every newspaper for sale.’ While large chains continue to control the largest share of newspapers, the past three years have been marked by increased activity from medium-size and small owners. At the same time, new chains, such as privately-held Carpenter Media Group, have grown at a meteoric pace through acquisitions, as owners both large and small have sold some of their properties. In this year’s report, we tracked close to 270 papers that changed hands across 77 different transactions,” the report stated.